Man Arrested For ESPN.com Comment That Threatened To Kill Kids Over New LeBron Sneaker

We hate to use such cliched terms, but it's hard to describe the ESPN.com comment section without words like "cesspool" and "wretched hive of scum and villainy" and "somehow even worse than Yahoo's comment section." But that's an unfair generalization. Not everyone there is horribly racist or a ward of the state or a serial paint huffer. There are educated people! College graduates! Like Eric Yee: he's only 21, and he was just a few credits shy of his Yale degree when he dropped out this spring. We need more commenters like Eric Yee.

Oh, it seems Yee was arrested in California after commenting about how he'd like to kill teenagers who buy LeBron's new shoes.

On Thursday, in the comments on this story about the Nike LeBron X, the posters were getting riled up. But none more than Yee. He "could see children from where he was at and had no problem murdering them," he wrote, adding that it would be like the Aurora shooting.

An ESPN moderator (they do exist!) saw the post, and ESPN told Bristol police. Police determined that the posts were coming from Los Angeles, alerted the local sheriff, and yesterday arrested Yee at his home in Valencia, Calif. Less than comforting: his house overlooks two schools, and he owns a number of guns.

Yee is being held on $1 million bail, which, yikes, is probably a little overreaction to a dumbass posting stuff on a message board. (I'm reminded of Jake Brahm, the 21-year-old 4chan user who spammed his "plans" to detonate a series of bombs at NFL games in 2006, and served six months in prison.) But perhaps this is the best and only way to punish comment section stupidity. If so, Police State > Tebow.