© 2025
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Man Pleads Guilty In UMass Amherst Lockdown Case

An aerial view of the UMass Amherst campus
Wikipedia

A 19 year old man pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges stemming from a February incident in a UMass Amherst dormitory that led to a lockdown of the flagship campus.

William McKeown of Framingham pleaded guilty to larceny and assault and battery and was sentenced to a year in jail followed by two years probation, according the Northwestern District Attorney’s office. 

McKeown and an accomplice, who pleaded guilty last May, tried to pass off shredded vegetables as marijuana in a drug deal, and a fight broke out when the ruse was discovered.

They were armed with a BB gun, and that led to the campus sending emergency alerts to 39,000 people, according to Police Chief Tyrone Parham.

" We let them know what happened and to shelter in place in their residence hall or in their academic building," Parham explained in the hours following the incident.

The two convicted men are barred from the UMass campus during their probation. The victim is no longer a student at the school.

The record-setting tenure of Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. The 2011 tornado and its recovery that remade the largest city in Western Massachusetts. The fallout from the deadly COVID outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers Home. Those are just a few of the thousands and thousands of stories WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill has covered for WAMC in his nearly 17 years with the station.