Bio student thrown in the clink for Muamba Twitter rant
Troll earns 8-week stint for mocking footie ace
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A Welsh biology student was jailed today for tweeting racist abuse at footballer Fabrice Muamba after the Bolton midfielder collapsed during a match.
Liam Stacey, 21, tweeted "LOL **** Muamba. He's dead!!!" as medics tried to revive the 23-year-old player, who had suffered a heart attack during an FA Cup quarter-final match against Tottenham Hotspur on 17 March.
Stacey's crass comments provoked revulsion and led to a number of complaints to police.
He was quickly tracked down, arrested and charged with inciting racial hatred. The Swansea University student initially claimed his Twitter account had been hacked but later admitted he sent the offending tweet and follow up messages aimed at other Twitter users who took him to task for his outburst.
Last week Stacey pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred before Swansea magistrates and returned today to learn he would be jailed for eight weeks (56 days) for the offence.
District judge John Charles told the third-year undergraduate that he had posted "vile and offensive" comments and that his sentence had to "reflect public abhorrence", Sky News reports.
Muamba remains in intensive care at the London Chest hospital, where his condition is described as serious but stable, according to the latest statement by Bolton Wanderers bosses. The Zaire-born footballer received numerous defibrillator shocks both on the pitch and in the ambulance, but his heart stopped beating for 78 minutes. ®
COMMENTS
Wait, what?
I presume the **** is fuck? If so, where exactly is the "inciting racial hatred" part?
Re: Clearly...
What "racism"? Unless we're not being told the whole story, there is none. It's like Cartman's Silly Hate Crime but in real life.
So, eight weeks in the slammer for being a bit of a dick on the internet? I dread to think what I deserve by those standards!
Wow, that was WAY more difficult than I thought it would be
Confirmed - It's the F*** four letter word (F-bomb) we all know, not some obscure racist epithet... which confirms the suspicion that the quote in the article really isn't obviously racist *by itself*.
After all, if we were to arrest every person who had ever dropped a mean-spirited F-bomb about a sports figure in general, or a sports figure of a different race in particular, those stands wouldn't be nearly as crowded would they?
That said, in context of his other tweets, like these little gems in response to other tweeters (is that what they're called?):
- "I aint your friend you w*g c**t ....go pick some cotton"
- "go suck muamba's dead black "d**k and then you aids ridden t***t"
- "owwww go suck a n****r "d**k you f*****g aids ridden c**t"
- "Your mothers a w*g and your dad is a rapist"
...the issue is much less ambiguous. The article really should be more clear about this, because it seems to be his racist comments after that initial comment that are the most damning - not the one quoted. Without the context of his follow on rants the story really doesn't make much sense - or worse, comes across as some sort of knee-jerk overreaction.
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