Man Arrested Who Claimed to Be 'Next Elliot Rodger'

Keshav Bhide said everything UCSB shooter did was 'perfectly justified'
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 17, 2014 7:12 AM CDT
Man Arrested Who Claimed to Be 'Next Elliot Rodger'
This undated photo from the California Department of Motor Vehicles shows the driver license photo of Elliot Rodger.   (AP Photo/California DMV)

A 23-year-old University of Washington student is facing felony harassment and cyberstalking charges after police say he threatened to kill women at the school and "execute the same thing" as Elliot Rodger, who killed six people during a shooting rampage in Santa Barbara last month. Police were tipped off to Keshav Bhide's YouTube videos and Google+ postings, in which Bhide praised Rodger and talked about his own plans, and arrested him in Seattle Saturday with the help of the FBI, KIRO-TV reports. "I am the next Elliot Rodger and guess what I’ll do the right thing this time," Bhide allegedly wrote, according to the Raw Story.

In another posting, Bhide said "everything Elliot did is perfectly justified"; he also said he had "no option" other than doing what Rodger did. Like Rodger, Bhide ranted against women in his online messages, but he allegedly said that unlike Rodger, he would "make sure I kill only women." Earlier this month, someone threatened UW sororities while referencing the UCSB massacre—in one incident reported by the UW student newspaper, a man called the Delta Gamma house and said he was "looking for someone to shoot"—but it's not clear whether Bhide had anything to do with that. (More Elliot Rodger stories.)

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