A university student who brandished a fake gun and threatened to shoot his classmates if his presentation went badly has been jailed.
Yihe Xiong, a 25-year-old Masters student from China, had pulled out what appeared to be a handgun outside the classroom at the University of Exeter in mid-June.
The aspiring computer software developer claimed to his classmates that he had 12 bullets inside the replica Beretta 92 semi-automatic pistol.
He then warned he would start shooting "randomly" if he was not happy with how his presentation went.
Xiong is then said to have walked into the presentation room with the fake weapon in his trousers, before reproducing it and pointing it at a student behind him, saying: "Here's another target."
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After completing the presentation – during which he left the gun under his coat on his chair – Xiong said he was joking, and offered to prove it was a fake.
But a lecturer had alerted police, which responded with armed officers and a dog unit to the Streatham campus in Devon.
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Judge Peter Johnson, who sentenced Xiong on Tuesday to eight months behind bars, said the 25-year-old had committed a "calculated act of breathtaking stupidity".
Speaking to the defendant, he said: "You severely frightened a number of your fellow students.
"You did this in the middle of a busy university in the day time. Rumours that there was a gunman on the loose were no doubt spreading like wildfire."
The judge then added that police had responded to the emergency call looking for "a gunman, not knowing if he was going on a killing spree".
He added: "The officers in these circumstances are on a knife edge.
"This was a place of learning, full of students, that was put into a state of lock down while armed police atteRead More – Source
