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Connecticut Man Arrested After Threats Made Against Obama

The Secret Service took a Connecticut man into custody Thursday after he allegedly threatened President Barack Obama.

Joseph Antonelli, 64, of Stamford, Conn., was arrested by the Greenwich (Conn.) Police Department and charged with three accounts of disorderly conduct after he allegedly wrote threatening letters to Obama and left them at the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee headquarters.

Obama was visiting the state Thursday, including Greenwich and Stamford, to raise money for Democratic Senatorial candidate Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

Frank Farricker, DTC chairman, told the Greenwich Post that the suspect left the letters over the course of a week. The first letter was nonthreatening but full of anger toward Democrats, Farricker said. The second included “non-specific threats against the president,” he said.

DTC then called the police and Secret Service to investigate. Investigators installed a hidden camera at the DTC headquarters to identify the author of the threatening letters. Farricker told the Post the suspect dropped a third letter at 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Farricker had not seen the contents of the letter but said the first two were written in a “very disjointed” style.

Antonelli works in Greenwich, according to the Post. He is being held on $10,000 cash bond and will appear in court Sept. 24.

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