A woman working for an online floral delivery company has been fired following allegations that she sent a death threat to a professor in a Minnesota university from her work machine.

On the 8th of July, Paul “PZ” Myers, an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris featured a piece in his blog, which garnered some controversy. Myers is well known for his criticism of religion and creationism and following the post he received some attention and abusive messages from member of the public who disagreed with what he had said.

One of these emails was alleged to have come from Melanie Kroll and was sent from her 1-800-flowers.com employee email address on Sunday. The mail gave Meyers two options: Leave his job at the university “for the good of the children” or if he didn’t fancy quitting his job he could opt for getting his “brains beat in."

Kroll sent a second email on Monday claiming that while the message had been sent from her computer, from her email account, she herself was not the one wielding the poison pen. She went on to say that the default address on her computer is her work address and would look into the issue of who sent the letter. She then reassured Myers that the threat was “empty” as anyone who would have had access to her computer was “harmless.”

NetworkWorld spoke to the president of the e-company who told them that all employees were aware any misuse of company systems or equipment for personal use may result in the termination of their position.

Several reports claim that the email was not from Melanie but from her husband Chuck, who sent it using the default address, however there is no word on whether or not Melanie will be reinstated.