Making threats about a game turned out very serious indeed for one Michigan fan. During the Wolverines’ Nov. 24, 2018 game against Ohio State (which the Buckeyes won 62-39), Daniel Rippy, a Michigan Wolverines fan then living in Livermore, California, used Facebook Messenger to make threats to kill then-Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, players, family members, and fans. Rippy (seen above in a photo supplied by the Franklin County Jail) has been in jail for 10 months in Columbus awaiting sentencing, and on Tuesday, he was officially sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Here’s more on that from Andrew Welsh-Huggins of The Associated Press:
Federal Judge Algenon Marbley had harsh words for Rippy during Tuesday’s sentencing done via video conference because of the coronavirus pandemic. Marbley referenced the mass shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 and Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 as he lectured Rippy on the seriousness of the threats against college athletes just playing a game. “It’s college competition. That’s all it is,” Marbley said.
What Rippy “epitomizes is fandom spiraled out of control,” Marbley said. The judge added: “We have to take this seriously because it happens.”
The 29-year-old Rippy, being held in jail in Columbus, apologized several times, saying he’d been having “a bad day” when he made the threats and promised it would never happen again. As part of an argument for a lesser sentence, Rippy and his lawyer emphasized that once he’s out of prison, he has a placement at a transitional housing center in California for men recently released from incarceration.
“I really didn’t mean for any of this. I feel really bad about it. I would never, ever do any act like this,” Rippy said.
These were quite the detailed threats. As per a Welsh-Huggins story from July 1 when Rippy pled guilty, he made threats not just to the school’s general Facebook page, but also threatened the lives of specific players and coaches.
Rippy threatened a shooting at the school, saying in a Facebook message to the university, “I’m seriously going to hurt the students and all of the players from the football team,” according to a statement of facts filed Wednesday with the plea agreement.
In separate messages, Rippy also threatened “to injure or kill specific players, their family members and the head coach,” the document said.
The school took those threats seriously, and tried to figure out with authorities if Rippy was at the game and if he posed an immediate danger. And those weren’t the first threats Rippy sent that week. He’s also a Duke basketball fan, and the government revealed in a filing earlier this month that he’d made threats against the Gonzaga basketball team following their win over Duke on Nov. 21, 2018, saying on Gonzaga’s Facebook page “Yeah and when I get my hands on the players from the basketball team there [sic] going to die one by one.”
Rippy’s one year and one day sentence is on the lighter end of what he could have received, as this could have carried a penalty of up to five years in prison and prosecutors had asked for a 15-month sentence. And he’ll receive credit for the time he’s already spent in prison awaiting sentencing. But this is still a case demonstrating that making threats over the outcome of a game can carry serious consequences.
[The Associated Press; photo via 10tv.com]
