Man Arrested For Threatening Google’s Marissa Mayer On Twitter, Sent Over 20,000 Tweets
A man has been arrested for allegedly threatening Google executive Marissa Mayer on Twitter.
Gregory Calvin King was arrested on August 19 by the FBI after he relocated to the San Antonio, Texas area from Virginia. The 27-year-old was indicted on felony charges in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Thursday for allegedly posting over 20,000 threatening messages on the microblogging site between November of 2010 and August of 2011 that were sent directly to Mayer‘s account. These messages ranged from extremely profane and violent to threatening but nonsensical.
The indictment mentioned 2 messages that were particularly threatening. The messages posted on August 14th read: ““IM SURE YOU THINK IM SERIOUS AND I’LL F****** SHOOT YOU” and “I REALLY THINK I NEED TO SHOOT SOMEONE TO EVEN MY F****** SCORE.” However, King has posted various messages on his account (@gck764) since those. Other posts include “Google has to be gay” and “WHY ARE YOU SCARED?” King also accused Mayer of having him arrested and having connections to a group that tried to infect him with HIV, as well as making various racial slurs.
According to an FBI spokesperson, there isn’t a known connection between King and Mayer so it’s uncertain why she is a target, but she is a very well known executive who happens to work for one of the most popular companies in the world — Google. As the vice president of local, maps and location services at Google, she’s frequently in the limelight not only because of her high-powered position but because she was the company’s first female engineer.
The San Francisco Examiner reports that on August 22, after the initial court appearance, a prosecutor asked that King be held without bail because he was “a danger to the safety of the community.” He was sent to San Francisco for prosecution on August 25, but a federal court date has not been set at the time of this writing.