In October 2023, an exclusionary order was placed against Michael Lee after he threatened a mass shooting at the University of Arizona. On Friday, Oct. 25, that order expired.
UA students reported Lee in Oct. 2023 for threatening to take revenge on “all of the chads and stacies” at the UA over several Snapchat group chats. On April 10, after pleading guilty, Lee was arrested and sentenced to 16 months in prison.
Lee is not a student at UA and the terminology he used (chads and stacies) is a reference to incel ideology. Incels, or involuntary celibates, are an online community who have grown increasingly hostile towards women and men who are sexually active because of their own inability to participate or find success in the sexual field.
In this case, it has been suspected that Lee was referring to the Greek Life scene at UA. He made further references to incel ideology through different group chats and ended his statement with “im gonna do it guys, my mind is made up and there’s nothing u can do or say to stop me.”
Lee also admitted that those messages referenced incel ideology, language and motivations, including referring to a well-known, self-identified incel and mass shooter when he pleaded guilty in April.
The University of Arizona Police Department ran the plates on Lee’s car after his arrest and found that his car had been parked on Greek Row nearly every night from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. from Oct. 11-20, just days before his arrest.
UAPD cited this event as an example of blocking a threat before it could become a reality and urges students to report any threatening behavior they experience, as it could make a difference.
Though his exclusionary order has expired, Lee will be on supervised release for three years after he has served his sentence. The conditions of supervised release include substance abuse testing, a mental health assessment, location monitoring and a no-contact provision that precludes defendants from being on the UA campus.
“One thing to keep in mind is that, although his exclusionary order has expired, he is still in custody. Conditions of his release could still bar him from coming on campus. There’s a lot more administration that the courts do that could still keep him from coming on campus based on the terms of his supervised release,” UAPD officer Marvin Smith said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the UAPD, as part of the FBI’s Southern Arizona Violent Crime and Gang Task Force, conducted the investigation in this case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Rossi, District of Arizona, Tucson, handled the prosecution.
Follow the Daily Wildcat on Instagram and Twitter/X
