Daley Twitter ‘troll’ given police warning

A 17-year-old youth who was arrested for sending abusive Twitter messages to British diving star Tom Daley has been given a warning about harassment, police said on Wednesday.

Police in the county of Dorset, southwest England, said the teenager, who was arrested hours after Daley received the tweets, had also been bailed pending further investigations into other messages on his account.

Daley, 18, and his partner Pete Waterfield finished fourth in the 10m men’s synchro but afterwards re-tweeted a message he had received on the micro-blogging site, accusing him of letting down his father, who died of brain cancer last year.

It has been reported that the sender also threatened the diver if further action was taken against his correspondence.

But there have also been questions about whether the arrest was an over-reaction, while a freedom of expression campaign group said that Daley’s actions in re-tweeting the offensive comments were better than recourse to law.

“Tom Daley showed a lot of class in responding to the trolls,” said Robert Sharp from English PEN. “He re-tweeted the offensive comments and the Twitter troll received a social humiliation at the hands of Tom’s many fans.

“This kind of punishment is usually better than involving the law.”

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