Cornell student Mateu Healey-Parera spent the weekend in the Onondaga County Justice Center in New York on a $50,000 cash or $100,000 bond after he was arrested for possessing a rifle on the property of Syracuse University. Syracuse Police Chief Mark Rusin said if Healey-Parera managed to make bond he would be "transferred to a local hospital" for a mental health evaluation, and that's exactly what happened when Healey-Parera made bond on Wednesday.
Healey-Parera was also "red-flagged" by a judge in Tompkins County, New York after his arrest, allowing police to enter his residence to search for and seize any other firearms he might have had.
Justice Elizabeth Aherne of the state Supreme Court in Tompkins County is handling the ERPO case, according to Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County District Attorney.
The Tompkins County Clerk’s Office has refused to release the ERPO and the related case documents, declaring them “confidential.”
Court records in New York state are generally open to the public, including ERPOs, unless sealed by a judge. Healey-Parera’s ERPO was not sealed by a judge.
McNamara said Healey-Parera purchased the gun legally. He said besides the location of the bus stop, everything his client did that day was legal and protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The gun he purchased, a 1905 30-06 US Rock Island rifle with a scope attached, is legal to own and carry without a permit.
In addition to the cased rifle, Healey-Parera also allegedly had two boxes of 30-06 ammo in his backpack.
The local prosecutor says there are still "many questions" about why Healey-Parera purchased the rifle, which might be true. But if there are any indications that he was planning on doing anything nefarious with it, neither police nor the prosecutor's office have released that information to the public despite having four full days to investigate Healey-Parera since his arrest on Saturday afternoon.
In order to secure an Extreme Risk Protection Order in New York, a judge is supposed to determine that there is "probable cause to believe the respondent is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to himself, herself or others."
The judge is also supposed to consider "any relevant factors, including, but not limited to, the following acts of the respondent."
(a) a threat or act of violence or use of physical force directed toward self, the petitioner, or another person;
(b) a violation or alleged violation of an order of protection;
(c) any pending charge or conviction for an offense involving the use of a weapon;
(d) the reckless use, display or brandishing of a firearm, rifle or shotgun;
(e) any history of a violation of an extreme risk protection order;
(f) evidence of recent or ongoing abuse of controlled substances or alcohol;
(g) evidence of recent acquisition of a firearm, rifle, shotgun or other deadly weapon or dangerous instrument, or any ammunition therefor;
or
(h) evidence of recent acts of aggravated cruelty to animals as defined in section three hundred fifty-three-a of the agriculture and
markets law.
According to the publicly released information, the only relevant factor was Healey-Parera's purchase of the rifle and ammunition. Is that purchase alone enough to establish probable cause that he was a threat to himself or others?
The lack of information, including documents that are allegedly being withheld from local media in violation of state law, is deeply troubling.
If there's more to this story then authorities should say so, because at the moment it sure looks like a college student was kept in jail for days on a fairly high bond,, "red flagged", and subject to a mental health evaluation solely for legally purchasing a bolt-action rifle along with two boxes of ammunition, and mistakenly believing he could lawfully possess the long gun at a bus stop located on Syracuse University campus.
***UPDATE***
As it turns out, there allegedly is more to the story. As Syracuse.com reports:
A Cornell University student arrested with a rifle in Syracuse told police that he purchased it to protect himself from federal immigration authorities, police wrote in court documents.
The student, Mateu Healey-Parera, told a Syracuse police officer that he had purchased the rifle in the event that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents “illegally detained” him or “surrounded his residence,” the officer wrote in an affidavit obtained by syracuse.com | The Post-Standard.
Healey-Parera, a dual citizen of Spain and the United States, said he would use the 1905 .30-06 US Rock Island rifle to “shoot an ICE agent as a last resort if they were to come to his home in Ithaca,” the officer, William Clayton, wrote.
According to the website, this was part of the information that police used in their request for an Extreme Risk Protection Order. According to the website, Healey-Parera also told investigators that he participated in a protest with other Cornell students "after an arms dealer presented on campus," He allegedly went on to say that the presence of law enforcement at the protest "upset him and led him to want to purchase a firearm."
Did those statements give the judge probable cause to believe that Healey-Parera posed a threat to himself or others? He basically told police that if anyone came to deport him he was prepared to shoot them, and I'm guessing that was alarming enough to convince the judge that Healey-Parera was better off disarmed. If there was no reason for him to believe that he was at risk of deportation, that might explain why authorities placed him on a mental health hold as well.
Prosecutors still haven't charged him with anything other than possessing a weapon on the Syracuse University campus, and Healey-Parera's attorney maintains that "Much of what is alleged that day was protected by his Constitutional rights,” adding that “He was not a threat to anyone and there is no allegation that he was a threat to anyone.”
Maybe, but saying he bought a gun to shoot ICE agents if necessary isn't something that police are going to shrug their shoulders at either. At the very least, this story just got a heck of a lot more complicated than it was based on the initial statements by police and prosecutors.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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