A Drexel University student was arrested in Utah this week after posting a video to YouTube in which he said he was going to travel to the same university where Charlie Kirk was assassinated to “fulfill my lifelong duty of finally killing woke,” authorities said.
Blake Francis Rogers posted a 70-second video to a private account on Sept. 15 and sent it to about a dozen people, according to an affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
After the FBI discovered the video, local authorities said they went to Rogers’ family’s house in Summit County, where he’d been staying, and he admitted creating the video but said it was intended as a joke.
Rogers, 20, was arrested and jailed for a threat of terrorism, a misdemeanor, court documents say. But prosecutors had not filed any formal charges against him as of Friday morning, and officials in the Summit County Attorney’s office did not immediately respond to questions Friday about whether they intended to do so.
Bail was set at $1,000, and court documents said Rogers would be subjected to GPS tracking after being released.
The documents do not indicate whether Rogers had retained an attorney, and attempts to reach him Friday were not immediately successful.
A Drexel spokesperson said in a statement that the school was “aware a student had been arrested in Utah,” adding: “The University takes incidents of this nature with the utmost seriousness and addresses them as part of its established student conduct policies, which may result in disciplinary actions up to and including suspension or expulsion.”
According to the arrest affidavit, Rogers posted the video to YouTube Monday evening, less than a week after Kirk was fatally shot at Utah Valley University.
In the video, the affidavit said, Rogers said he was “beginning my odyssey” to that school, later adding: “If you are receiving this video, it means that I did not make it back on this trip, and I was defeated by my mortal enemy, the woke mind virus at Utah Valley University, where, where Charlie Kirk was assassinated.”
Rogers concluded by saying he wanted a gold statue of himself to be erected and put up to replace the statute of Drexel’s mascot, Mario the Magnificent, on Market Street.
Rogers’ roommates told NBC10 this week they believed his video was meant to be a joke.
Rogers said the same to police in Utah, according to the affidavit, telling them he “lean[ed] left” politically but was not especially serious about it, and didn’t use the term “woke” to refer to any specific ideology or group.
“He does not understand why the FBI would believe this was a credible threat,” the document said.