Cornell Student Facing Felony Charges and 'Red Flag' Order After Rifle Purchase ***UPDATED***

https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2026/03/12/cornell-student-facing-
felony-charges-and-red-flag-order-after-rifle-purchase-n1231848

Cornell student Mateu Healey-Parera spent the weekend in the Onondaga 
County Justice Center in New York on a $50,000 cash or $100,000 bond after 
he was arrested for possessing a rifle on the property of Syracuse 
University. Syracuse Police Chief Mark Rusin said if Healey-Parera managed 
to make bond he would be "transferred to a local hospital" for a mental 
health evaluation, and that's exactly what happened when Healey-Parera 
made bond on Wednesday. 

Healey-Parera was also "red-flagged" by a judge in Tompkins County, New 
York after his arrest, allowing police to enter his residence to search 
for and seize any other firearms he might have had. 

Justice Elizabeth Aherne of the state Supreme Court in Tompkins County is 
handling the ERPO case, according to Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins 
County District Attorney.

The Tompkins County Clerk’s Office has refused to release the ERPO and the 
related case documents, declaring them “confidential.”

Court records in New York state are generally open to the public, 
including ERPOs, unless sealed by a judge. Healey-Parera’s ERPO was not 
sealed by a judge.

That's very odd, especially since at this point, neither Rushin or 
prosecutors have said that Healey-Parera had any evil intentions or plans 
to commit any kind of criminal act. And Healey-Parera's attorney Jordan 
McNamara has argued that his client was arrested and charged simply for 
having a cased rifle that he had just lawfully purchased while he was 
waiting on a bus to take him back to Ithaca, New York and the Cornell 
campus.
McNamara said Healey-Parera purchased the gun legally. He said besides the 
location of the bus stop, everything his client did that day was legal and 
protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The gun he purchased, a 1905 30-06 US Rock Island rifle with a scope 
attached, is legal to own and carry without a permit.


In addition to the cased rifle, Healey-Parera also allegedly had two boxes 
of 30-06 ammo in his backpack. 

The local prosecutor says there are still "many questions" about why 
Healey-Parera purchased the rifle, which might be true. But if there are 
any indications that he was planning on doing anything nefarious with it, 
neither police nor the prosecutor's office have released that information 
to the public despite having four full days to investigate Healey-Parera 
since his arrest on Saturday afternoon.

In order to secure an Extreme Risk Protection Order in New York, a judge 
is supposed to determine that there is "probable cause to believe the 
respondent is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious 
harm to himself, herself or others." 

The judge is also supposed to consider "any relevant factors, including, 
but not limited to, the following acts of the respondent."


(a) a threat or act of violence or use of physical force directed toward 
self, the petitioner, or another person;

(b) a violation or alleged violation of an order of protection;

(c) any pending charge or conviction for an offense involving the use of a 
weapon;

(d) the reckless use, display or brandishing of a firearm, rifle or 
shotgun;

(e) any history of a violation of an extreme risk protection order;

(f) evidence of recent or ongoing abuse of controlled substances or 
alcohol;

(g) evidence of recent acquisition of a firearm, rifle, shotgun or other 
deadly weapon or dangerous instrument, or any ammunition therefor;
or

(h) evidence of recent acts of aggravated cruelty to animals as defined in 
section three hundred fifty-three-a of the agriculture and
markets law.

According to the publicly released information, the only relevant factor 
was Healey-Parera's purchase of the rifle and ammunition. Is that purchase 
alone enough to establish probable cause that he was a threat to himself 
or others?

The lack of information, including documents that are allegedly being 
withheld from local media in violation of state law, is deeply troubling. 

If there's more to this story then authorities should say so, because at 
the moment it sure looks like a college student was kept in jail for days 
on a fairly high bond,, "red flagged", and subject to a mental health 
evaluation solely for legally purchasing a bolt-action rifle along with 
two boxes of ammunition, and mistakenly believing he could lawfully 
possess the long gun at a bus stop located on Syracuse University campus. 

***UPDATE*** 

As it turns out, there allegedly is more to the story. As Syracuse.com 
reports:

A Cornell University student arrested with a rifle in Syracuse told police 
that he purchased it to protect himself from federal immigration 
authorities, police wrote in court documents.

The student, Mateu Healey-Parera, told a Syracuse police officer that he 
had purchased the rifle in the event that U.S. Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement agents “illegally detained” him or “surrounded his residence,” 
the officer wrote in an affidavit obtained by syracuse.com | The Post-
Standard.

Healey-Parera, a dual citizen of Spain and the United States, said he 
would use the 1905 .30-06 US Rock Island rifle to “shoot an ICE agent as a 
last resort if they were to come to his home in Ithaca,” the officer, 
William Clayton, wrote.

According to the website, this was part of the information that police 
used in their request for an Extreme Risk Protection Order. According to 
the website, Healey-Parera also told investigators that he participated in 
a protest with other Cornell students "after an arms dealer presented on 
campus," He allegedly went on to say that the presence of law enforcement 
at the protest "upset him and led him to want to purchase a firearm." 

Did those statements give the judge probable cause to believe that Healey-
Parera posed a threat to himself or others? He basically told police that 
if anyone came to deport him he was prepared to shoot them, and I'm 
guessing that was alarming enough to convince the judge that Healey-Parera 
was better off disarmed. If there was no reason for him to believe that he 
was at risk of deportation, that might explain why authorities placed him 
on a mental health hold as well. 

Prosecutors still haven't charged him with anything other than possessing 
a weapon on the Syracuse University campus, and Healey-Parera's attorney 
maintains that "Much of what is alleged that day was protected by his 
Constitutional rights,” adding that “He was not a threat to anyone and 
there is no allegation that he was a threat to anyone.”

Maybe, but saying he bought a gun to shoot ICE agents if necessary isn't 
something that police are going to shrug their shoulders at either. At the 
very least, this story just got a heck of a lot more complicated than it 
was based on the initial statements by police and prosecutors. 


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