A North Vancouver man who faces criminal charges for threatening on Facebook to copy the Colorado shootings wrote several angry rants in the week leading up to his arrest, including one in which he said the problems of society "can only be treated with a little murder."
"We need more radical terrorists in the world. There's an infestation of ignorance in North America which can only be treated with a little murder," wrote a Facebook account user believed by police to be Ryan Lewis, 32, in the early-morning hours of July 23.
A day later Lewis wrote another post on his Facebook page, saying, "That Colorado shit is gonna happen here soon."
Police believe Lewis was referring to the July 20 Colorado shooting that left a dozen people dead after a man opened fire in a movie theatre during a screening of the Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises.
Lewis was arrested by North Vancouver RCMP Aug. 1 as he left his apartment building in the 500 block of Lonsdale Avenue.
Police seized his home computer for forensic analysis.
Lewis has been charged with threatening to cause death or bodily harm to the general public. He was released on bail Aug. 2 and has not yet entered a plea to the charge.
Following his arrest, police said they were taking Lewis's posted threats seriously.
In one media interview following his arrest, Lewis described his posts as "stupid" and said he never intended to follow through on them.
But in an application for a search warrant for his apartment obtained by the North Shore News, RCMP detailed the Facebook posts that had prompted their concern.
According to those documents, Lewis first came to police attention on July 25, when the North Vancouver RCMP received an anonymous CrimeStoppers tip saying Lewis's Facebook page should be checked.
The anonymous source told police "Lewis is quite disturbed and has threatened many times to kill and hatch plans to harm many in Vancouver," according to the search warrant application.
Police did some preliminary checking, but didn't find any Facebook pages belonging to Ryan Lewis open to the public.
The alarm was raised again a week later, however, when the Vancouver Police Department forwarded a message to the North Vancouver detachment that it had received from one of Lewis's Facebook friends in the United Kingdom.
That message contained detailed, profanity-ridden and disturbing messages that the friend said Lewis had posted.
According to the documents filed by police, Lewis's angry rants started on June 10 when he wrote "Going for a walk. Hate this city and its people so much. I will be looking for someone to put down."
A couple of weeks later, Lewis posted a more graphic message, describing people in Vancouver as "coward hicks" and adding, "I will murder any of you trashy f**ks that want to cross me."
A month later, on July 25 - just days after the Colorado shooting - Lewis wrote a rant about how Vancouver is filled with "blind idiots" and "bleeding heart morons" who ignore the problems of the city.
"You'll be surprised when I go through with my plan Vancouver," he wrote. "No one is innocent."
A few hours later, around 4 a.m., Lewis wrote about wanting to "f**king clean this place up myself. Who knows, maybe I started already."
Police tracked Lewis to a Telus account at his mother's apartment in North Vancouver. They also managed to find one of Lewis's Facebook friends who allowed them to view the posts, visible only Lewis's approximately 230 social media friends online.
Following Lewis's arrest, North Vancouver RCMP spokesman Richard DeJong said threats are treated the same whether they are made in person, phoned, texted or posted through social media.
Lewis remains free on bail under conditions that he not have access to the Internet, that he live with his mother and that he abide by a curfew. He must also attend forensic psychiatric outpatient services and take anger management counseling.
According to information obtained by the North Shore News, Lewis is not known to suffer from mental illness, but has been described as an "angry" person.
