UCI professor planned to gun down 200 students, emails show

A UC Irvine professor accused in a series of arson fires following his son’s suicide wrote in emails that he was thinking about getting a dozen machine guns and shooting at least 200 students at his son’s high school before killing himself.

Upset over his son’s suicide, Rainer Reinscheid, 48, in April sent two emails to his wife and another to himself threatening to kill the assistant principal of University High School, shoot hundreds of students and burn the school to the ground in a “firestorm that destroys every single building.”

The emails, which were filed in court late Tuesday by Orange County prosecutors, show Reinscheid wrote that he wanted to kill school administrators, sexually assault two female staff members and kill himself in the same spot his 14-year-old son, Claas Stubbe, committed suicide in March.

“I need a a gun, many guns, and then I have the ride of my life,” Reinscheid wrote in one email to himself. “I will give myself a wonderful ending and be with Claas very soon. I like this plan, finally a good idea.”

Prosecutors and acquaintances say Reinscheid was furious at University High School for how it handled his son’s death, which happened after the student was disciplined for what school district officials called a “fairly minor” matter involving a theft from a student store.

Reinscheid, who teaches in UC Irvine’s department of pharmaceutical science, was arrested July 24 on charges of trying to use newspaper and lighter fluid to light a fire in Mason Park Preserve, not far from the wooded spot where his son hanged himself.

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This story was reported by Times Staff Writer Tony Barboza.