New York cops probe massacre threats on Twitter

NEW YORK (AFP) - New York police said on Tuesday they want to force Twitter to reveal who posted Tweets threatening to massacre theatergoers in a copycat of the recent bloodbath at a cinema in Colorado.

"I might just shoot up this theater in New York," one Tweet said. "I'm serious, people are gonna die like Aurora," another said, while a third threatened "mass murder for real."

After last month's massacre at the latest Batman film in Aurora, Colorado, which killed 12 and wounded 58, and the shooting of six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on Sunday, police in New York are on heightened alert.

New York Police Department chief spokesman Paul Browne said the Tweets, picked up by investigators at the end of last week, came to attention because they specifically mention the Longacre Theatre in Manhattan.