By Newton Now Staff
North Newton police arrested man on a pending felony criminal threat charge, alleging that he made posts on his social media account that coworkers at Lippert Components, as well as law enforcement, considered threatening.
Around 10:27 p.m., Thursday the Newton, North Newton and Harvey County Sheriff’s departments took Jacob A. Owens, 27, of Newton into custody on one felony count of making a criminal threat.
North Newton PD investigated the posts after receiving reports Thursday Night from employee of Lippert Components, a manufacturing business in North Newton.
According to Chief Randy Jordan the suspect made multiple threatening posts.
“There were employees that were concerned,” he said. “One of the posts was something to the effect that he hoped no one brings a gun to work.”
He said another was a meme, or statement attached to a picture saying “when you want to kill people.”
Jordan said taken together in context, the two posts provided enough evidence to constitute a possible criminal threat.
“The individual that reported these posts absolutely did the right thing. We always encourage people to report information like this,” Jordan said. “We take this extremely serious, and we will investigate.”
Jordan said that Owens was cooperative when arrested in a joint operation executed by local law enforcement.
“I appreciate being in a county where law enforcement really works well together and bends over backwards to help each other,” he said. “Last night Newton pd assisted and two sheriff detectives from the drug task force assisted us.
Owens currently is being held in the Harvey County Jail. A bond has yet to be issued.
