MiraCosta Student Suspected of Threatening Fellow Students

A MiraCosta College student was jailed this week for allegedly threatening the lives of other students in connection with a shooting that killed two teenagers and wounded two others last spring, authorities reported today.

Samuel Ruiz, 18, was arrested at the Oceanside campus Tuesday and booked on suspicion of making criminal threats, cyber-bullying by means of an electronic device and possession of an illegal weapon on school grounds, according to police.

A day after the deadly March 13 shooting at Libby Lake Park in Oceanside, several students at the college received threatening text messages from a so-called "Bart Cheng," who claimed that they would be killed if they continued to discuss the crime, Lt. Leonard Cosby said.

Detectives examined the electronic communications and soon identified Ruiz as the suspected perpetrator, the lieutenant said. When they confronted him, he denied sending the texts, Cosby said.

In late December, a student at El Camino High School received another message from "Bart Cheng." The text referenced the number "187" -- the California penal code for murder -- followed by "when you return from winter break."

The victim texted back, "Who are you?" and received the response, "Blood drop. You'll see."

Again, investigators traced the messages to Ruiz's phone, according to Cosby. They then obtained a warrant for the suspect's arrest, the lieutenant said.

When he was taken into custody, Ruiz allegedly was in possession of a spring-loaded knife, an illegal weapon on a school campus.

Authorities do not believe the suspect has any relationship to the five purported gang members facing trial in the deaths of 13-year-old Melanie Virgen and her friend Edgar Sanchez, 15, and the severe wounding of two other teens at the Calle Montecito park 10 months ago, or that he was trying to dissuade any witnesses from testifying in the case.

"He seemed to think it was some kind of prank," Cosby said.

The victims were ambushed while sitting on a couch near a memorial for a teenage couple gunned down in a gang assault two years earlier at the same site, according to police and prosecutors.

-- City News Service