Police in Tampa, Florida on Wednesday
arrested a 50-year-old man who threatened to wipe out the city's
entire gay community on Grindr, a dating app for gay and bisexual
men.
According to the Tampa Bay Times,
police have charged Ralph Perkins with a charge of making a written
threat to conduct a mass shooting.
Perkins reportedly made the threats
Monday after an unidentified person rejected his offer to move in
with him, according to the arrest report.
Police said Perkins wrote “I like to
take a gun I like to wipe the whole gay community out in Tampa and
then kill myself” and “That's going to be my ultimate present to
Tampa Florida is the annihilator the gay community before I kill
myself.”
The Times also reported that
Perkins is a registered sex offender. His status stems from a 2004
arrest in Alabama.
Police said that Perkins “did not
have any known immediate access to firearms and no weapons were
confiscated during the arrest.”
“However, we cannot predict what he
would have done had he not been arrested,” Tampa police
spokesperson Eddy Durkin told the Times in an email.
Perkins, who told a person that he was
suffering from stomach cancer, is being held in the Hillsborough
County jail without bail.