Rapper Arrested for Lyrics About School Shootings and Bombings

The rapper told police that he was "rapping as a humorous fictional character" when he made the concerning music, which included threats against government officials and racial groups.

By Allison Schonter

An aspiring Bentonville, Arkansas rapper was arrested earlier this month for allegedly putting threatening lyrics in his music. Reese Alexander Sullivan, 20, was arrested on a charge of first-degree terroristic threatening on Thursday, Nov. 2 after the FBI analyzed nine of his songs, which were found to contain a variety of threats, including threats of a school shooting, bombing public events, and shooting children, among others threats.

The investigation into Sullivan was sparked after the FBI National Threat Operations Center received a tip from an anonymous person about concerning lyrics in some of Sullivan's music, according to a probable cause affidavit, per KNWA. KATV reports that the tip included several links to music Sullivan uploaded online with lyrics containing threats of violence across all nine video uploads.

"Each of the video's audio was in the form of rap music," the affidavit said. "Statements and threats within the videos included racial statements about specific groups of people and killing them, bombing churches associated with a specific race, killing kids, raping children, bringing his gun to school and killing people of a specific ethnic group, shooting up his school because he was bullied, details of a plan about committing a school shooting, killing his grandmother, bombing a specific public event, killing the president and bombing the senate."

The FBI executed a search warrant of Sullivan's residence on Oct. 31. Authorities found no weapons or explosives inside the residence. When authorities interviewed the aspiring rapper at his job in Lowell, Sullivan confirmed the music was his, though he maintained that the songs were written and recorded when he was 17, and that he was "rapping as a humorous fictional character when he made the material," per KHBS-TV. He told officers that he "has not sexually abused children and he has no intent of committing the violent acts mentioned in his music." The affidavit says that Sullivan understood how the statements could be concerning to some.

Sullivan was ultimately arrested and booked into jail on Nov. 4 on a charge of first-degree terroristic threatening. He was released from jail on a $50,000 bond. He is scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 11 in Benton County. Amid his arrest, Sullivan has been ordered to refrain from using social media or make internet posts of a written, audio, or video nature.

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