LOS ANGELES — Police in California have arrested a German university professor after he wrote about gunning down students at his late son's high school and then killing himself, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday. Officers acted after they found the emails, by 48-year-old Reiner Reinscheid, a professor at the University of California, Irvine. Reinscheid was angry at University High School because his 14-year-old son, Claas Stubbe, had committed suicide in March after being disciplined for a theft from a school store, the newspaper said. In emails sent in April to his wife and to himself, Reinscheid fantasized about buying a dozen machine guns, killing 200 University High School students, raping a school counselor and killing the assistant principal who disciplined his son. “I will make him cry and beg, but I will not give him a chance, just like he did to Claas,” Reinscheid wrote. “I will make him die, slowly, surely. Next I will set fire to Uni High and try to burn down as much as I can, there should be nothing left that gives them a reason to continue their miserable school.” Reinscheid never acted on his most violent musings and police have no evidence he was preparing for a shooting, but prosecutors charged him with a series of small arsons that targeted the high school, the assistant principal's home and the park where Claas hanged himself. Five fires erupted between July 1 and July 19, and police caught Reinscheid as he tried to start a sixth one July 24. He was released the same day on bail, but rearrested July 27 after police found the emails on examining his cellphone. Copies of the messages sent from his university account were filed in court by prosecutors to have him held without bail. He's due in court for arraignment Aug. 8. Defense attorney Ron Cordova did not return calls for comment. He told the judge in court Tuesday that he didn't want his client to “suffer from a media circus.” In the emails, the distraught father asks his wife to forgive him for many disappointments but asks her to understand that he “had to go this way” after detailing plans to kill the vice principal and destroy the school in a firestorm. “You would have done the same if it was your child that you failed,” he wrote to her on April 26. Claas was Reinscheid's son from a first marriage. He has a stepdaughter and son from his second marriage. He asked his wife to tell their son, “Daddy was so sad when Claas passed away, he was just eaten away by his sadness and stopped breathing.” Claas killed himself after being ordered to pick up trash for stealing from the student store. After the suicide, rumors circulated around school that the teen had been bullied, but police and the school district say they found no such evidence. The arrest comes after a gunman opened fire in a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, killing 12 and wounding 58 at a midnight showing of latest Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises.” — Agencies
