Virginia sex offender confesses to threatening to murder black students at Howard University

A 26-year-old Virginia man who threatened the lives of students at Howard University, a historically black institution, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to making the racist threats.

The Washington Post reported that an attorney for John Edgar Rust, who was attending Missouri University during a period of racial unrest when he issued the threats in 2015 but was at home on break, claimed the Virginia man is mentally unstable but competent to stand trial.

"I left MU yesterday because I couldn’t put up with it anymore,” Rust wrote in a Facebook post. “I go home to Maryland and what do I see? The same old sh*t. Turn on the news and it’s always the n*ggers causing trouble everywhere. So I’ve decided. Any n*gger left at Howard University after 10 tomorrow will be the first to go. And any of those cheapskate n*gger who try to get out using the metro will regret that choice real fast.”

He went on to claim “it’s not murder if they’re black.”

Rust, who was on probation as part of his 2012 conviction for "indecent liberties with a child by custodian and aggravated sexual battery," made the threats against black students at Howard, which is located within the city limits of Washington, D.C., from a Panera Bread in Alexandria, Virginia. The location difference led to his charge and eventual guilty plea of "transmission in interstate commerce of a communication containing threats to injure the person of another."