TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A West Palm Beach man accused of cyberstalking a Florida State University student and claiming to be his biological father has been arrested.
Derrick Andrew Kelly, 57, remained in the Leon County Detention Center on Thursday. He was booked there Wednesday on a $1,500 bond.
On Sept. 11, 2015, the FSU student filed a report about being harassed by an unknown man who claimed to be his father and demanded he call him.
The student said Kelly had contacted his mother numerous times.
He told the FSU Police Department he had no idea why Kelly was trying to contact him as he knew his actual biological father and no one else in the family knew Kelly.
After talking about the incident with his mother, the FSU student felt like he should report it to authorities.
In a probable cause affidavit, the student said he followed the suspect on Twitter but said Kelly had never attempted to come to FSU for contact.
The student's mother told the FSU investigator that Kelly had started reaching out to her son in his high school senior year.
In a telephone interview in 2015, Kelly told the FSU investigator he has been looking for his son all over the state, claiming the student was taken away from him as a baby.
The FSU investigator told Kelly that neither the student nor his mother knows him and both wanted all communication with them to cease.
The court document shows the case was closed on Sept. 14, 2015, but was reopened on Oct. 1, 2015, because Kelly reached out to the student via Twitter.
The investigator said he found tweets that belonged to the suspect. One tweet said that "U think i'm a crazy man. You have lot's on your mine for the season please just one talk and I will fade away ... Us."
Another tweet: "Another birthday, I can only think of the early years, I was in love with my young son just as I've always been. I've done no bad."
The suspect has requested the appointment of a public defender and is to go to court March 13, 2018, for a case management conference.
