{"id":22145,"date":"2025-10-24T23:33:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T23:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/22145\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T23:33:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T23:33:06","slug":"case-dropped-for-former-san-diegan-accused-of-threat-at-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/22145\/","title":{"rendered":"Case dropped for former San Diegan accused of threat at campus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prosecutors in Utah have dropped a criminal case against a college student who grew up in San Diego after he was charged last month with making a terror threat in connection with a video he made following Charlie Kirk\u2019s shooting death.<\/p>\n

County prosecutors in the Park City area had charged Blake Francis Rogers, a 20-year-old who grew up in Scripps Ranch, with making a threat of terrorism that caused an emergency agency to act. Despite the charge being a misdemeanor, it drew national news coverage because of its connection to the Sept. 10 killing of Kirk, a conservative media figure and political organizer, at Utah Valley University.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors moved last week to dismiss the case, writing in a motion that a dismissal would be \u201cin the interest of justice,\u201d a generic phrase that prosecutors often use when seeking to drop charges against a defendant. Prosecutors in Utah\u2019s Summit County declined to comment Friday on their specific reasons for dropping the case.<\/p>\n

A judge granted the motion Monday, dismissing the charge without prejudice, meaning prosecutors could re-file a case in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to express my sincerest gratitude to everyone who has stood by me during this incredibly difficult time,\u201d Rogers told the Union-Tribune in a statement. \u201cThose who know me personally understand that this was a stupid edgy joke made by a na\u00efve kid. I deeply regret my actions and have learned an important lesson about digital responsibility. I\u2019m grateful that the case has been dismissed and look forward to moving on and putting this experience behind me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sheriff\u2019s deputies in Summit County, a mountainous region east of Salt Lake City, arrested Rogers on Sept. 16 at his family\u2019s home in Park City, about an hour northeast from the campus where Kirk was fatally shot. Rogers attends college in Pennsylvania but was visiting family in Utah, where he moved while he was in high school.<\/p>\n

According to CBS News<\/a>, Rogers had posted a 70-second video on YouTube in the days following Kirk\u2019s death in which he said in part: \u201cI am now beginning my odyssey to Utah Valley University, to fulfill my lifelong duty, of finally killing woke. If you are receiving this video, it means that I did not make it back on this trip, and I was defeated by my mortal enemy, the woke mind virus at Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was assassinated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Young, a San Diego-based attorney who represented Rogers, said the video was satirical in nature.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe video was intended as an inside joke to a few select friends,\u201d Young, a former federal prosecutor in San Diego, said in a statement. \u201cBecause of the size of the file, it was posted to a private link on YouTube. Even though it wasn\u2019t disseminated publicly, YouTube\u2019s threat algorithm picked it up and reported it to law enforcement which led to Blake\u2019s arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a news release at the time of the arrest, a sheriff\u2019s spokesperson in Park City said his office had been alerted to the video by the FBI.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously law enforcement needed to investigate it but I do not believe he should have been charged,\u201d Young said in his statement. \u201cThe joke did not target a specific person or group. He targeted the \u2018woke mind virus,\u2019 and it contained several tongue-in-cheek references to pop culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young also questioned why \u201ca misdemeanor charge was pushed as a national news story.\u201d Sgt. Skyler Talbot from the Summit County Sheriff\u2019s Office declined to discuss the dismissal of the case Friday, citing the potential for charges to be re-filed, but said his office issued a press release about the arrest only after dozens of media outlets nationwide had inquired.<\/p>\n

Young said that \u201cprosecutors recognized the case lacked merit and faced serious constitutional issues.\u201d He added: \u201cMaking a bad joke is still not a crime here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rogers was released from custody on bail shortly after his arrest but remained on pretrial supervision with a GPS ankle monitor until the case was dismissed. He is now facing potential discipline at his university.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prosecutors in Utah have dropped a criminal case against a college student who grew up in San Diego…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,1312,138,181,23,100,74,84,76,75,5953,1696],"class_list":{"0":"post-22145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-san-diego","15":"tag-san-diego-county","16":"tag-san-diego-headlines","17":"tag-san-diego-news","18":"tag-scripps-ranch","19":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}