With the recent shootings at Virginia Tech, a reported threat to shoot an employee at Fountain Dining Hall caused a scare, which defendants claim is false.

According to the police report, Dane Jones, a senior in polymer and color chemistry, threatened to “physically injure the person of Michael Reid, by stating ‘I’m [going to] get a gun and come back into Fountain Dining Hall and kill some [expletive] like the guy did at Virginia Tech.”

Reid is a Fountain Dining Hall employee. Officials from Fountain Dining Hall declined to comment and referred questions to News Services.

Deputy Director of Campus Police John Dailey said Jones is being charged with a minor citation after tracking Jones down and conducting an investigation.

Although Jones did not want to release a statement because he had a court date in two months, the five other students who were with him and were also searched after the incident, denied the charges.

“We have never heard of or met [Reid] before,” Bryan Hauss, a junior in history, said. “When his name was mentioned this afternoon, we were all actually kind of confused.”

Hauss said the students were discussing how crazy it was that one student shot 32 people and himself with only a 9 mm hand gun.

“We weren’t talking to anybody but ourselves,” he said.

According to Hauss, the six students have their own sympathies about the tragedy and wouldn’t joke about the situation.

According to Sgt. Jon Barnwell of Campus Police, any time a report such as this one occurs, the Campus Police department has to investigate and talk to the individuals involved.

“Based on what transpires from the interviews, we validate the situation,” he said.

Barnwell said in lieu of what happened at Virginia Tech especially, comments such as the one reported are going to raise people’s interests and push them to call Campus Police to report them.

“We have to be more aware,” he said. “This is part of the reason this threat was being taken seriously.”

According to Barnwell, although this situation was not considered more serious, he is not aware of any direct threats to one individual such as the one reported, though generalized bomb threats have been made in the past.

After Campus Police searched the six students at about 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, they were issued campus appearance tickets for unrelated reasons including possession of alcohol in the residence halls and stealing traffic cones, according to Hauss. One of the students is also facing the possibility of a military discharge.

Five of the six friends live in the same suite.

Seth Anderson, one of the other students who was part of the conversation at the dining hall, created a Facebook group called “Don’t speak your mind at Fountain because you’ll get busted by LIARS.”

“I honestly can’t think of any way our conversation could be misconstrued by an individual,” he said.

Anderson said he was flabbergasted by the accusation.

“What I believe is someone was offended by what we said or misheard a sentence,” he said.

According to Anderson, though, the conversation only consisted of what happened at Virginia Tech and the plausibility of a student using a 9 mm handgun to shoot so many, but it did get pretty heated.

“We came to the consensus that’s not hard to go into a dorm room and shoot,” he said. “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel,” he said.

Zack Derouiche, a sophomore in physics, said he didn’t really contribute to the conversation because he did not know much about guns or weapons, but said their conversation may have been heard by others.

“Sometimes, we get weird looks because we’re really loud,” he said. “But, there’s not much else going on.”

According to Hauss, the Campus Police began searching the students and their rooms at 8:30 a.m.

Derouiche, along with Brittany Phillips, a sophomore in textile and apparel management and one of the friends, was forced to miss tests Tuesday because of the investigation.

Phillips said police also searched her car.

David Brown, a sophomore in mathematics and physics and another of the friends, said although he wasn’t involved in the conversation as much as his friends were, the accusations were false.

“The conversation was [conducted in a] purely nonthreatening, nonfunny manner,” he said.

Jones’ court date is scheduled for June 12.