Science & Technology

Woman arrested over Hawking death threats

By T.K. Randall
July 2, 2016

Image: Stephen Hawking
Credit: (PD) NASA The 74-year-old author of 'A Brief History of Time' had been attending the annual Starmus astronomy festival in Tenerife when the arrest occurred.

It later transpired that the woman had previously sent a number of threatening messages to Hawking's Twitter account and that one of his children had reported her to the police.She has since been issued with a restraining order preventing her from going within 500 meters of the physicist and has also been banned from contacting him for eight months.

"She had been pursuing Mr Hawking throughout the world and in the last few days had sent him grave threats through social media and to his personal email," said a police spokesman.

"In the various emails he received she outlined plans to end his life during the scientific conference being held in Tenerife. Because of the information contained in the emails, it appeared the person sending them could have been inside the conference venue."

Source: Telegraph

Tags: Stephen Hawking