A UC Irvine pharmaceutical science professor, grieving over the suicide of his teenage son, wrote emails about committing mass murder at University High School:
“We did take these emails very seriously,” said Farrah Emami, spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office.
It began July 24, when police arrested Rainer Reinscheid, 48, on charges of trying to light a fire in Mason Park Preserve with newspaper and lighter fluid. It was not far from the wooded spot where his 14-year-old son, Claas Stubbe, had hanged himself four months earlier.
Reinscheid, who teaches in the department of pharmaceutical science, posted bail and was released that day.
But when police examined his cellphone three days later, they found something they described as much more sinister.
In the emails, Reinscheid had allegedly planned to obtain firearms to kill students and administrators, commit sexual assault, burn down the school and then kill himself, officials said.
The professor was arrested again and is now being held, at the request of prosecutors, without bail.
It seems quite odd that he blamed University High for his son’s suicide. The son had allegedly stolen an item from the school store and was given trash pickup as punishment. That incident seems unlikely to have been the primary cause of the suicide, but the father didn’t see it that way.