US

At Least 19 Adults, 8 Minors Have Been Arrested For Mass-Killing Threats Since El Paso

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Font Size:
  • At least 27 people have been arrested in connection to mass-killing threats since the mass shootings that took place on Aug. 3 and 4 in Texas and Ohio.
  • The FBI has encouraged local offices across the country to continue to search for similar threats and “suspicious activity.”
  • Eight of the 27 who have been arrested since the mass shootings earlier in August are minors.

Authorities have arrested at least 27 people for mass shooting threats since more than 30 people were killed in mass shootings on Aug. 3 and 4 in Texas and Ohio.

FBI Director Chris Wray ordered local offices around the country to be on the lookout for similar threats after the weekend of mass shootings, CNN reported.

“The FBI asks the American public to report to law enforcement any suspicious activity that is observed either in person or online,” the FBI said in an Aug. 4 statement.

People pray and pay their respects at the makeshift memorial for victims of the shooting that left a total of 22 people dead at the Cielo Vista Mall WalMart (background) in El Paso, Texas, on August 6, 2019 (Mark RALSTON / AFP / Getty Images)

People pray and pay their respects at the makeshift memorial for victims of the shooting that left a total of 22 people dead at the Cielo Vista Mall WalMart (background) in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 6, 2019. (Photo by MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

A total of 31 people were shot dead in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in one weekend. Law enforcement officials arrested and investigated the following people since then:

  1. Wayne Lee Padgett, 31 was arrested on Aug. 4 on a threat charge after threatening to “shoot up” a Gibsonton, Florida, Walmart store, forcing everyone in the building to evacuate, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
  2. A 13-year-old boy was arrested on Aug. 7 on a threat charge and sent to juvenile detention after he made violent threats on Facebook concerning a Weslaco, Texas, Walmart store, according to the Weslaco Police Department.
  3. Dmitriy Andreychenko, 20, was arrested on Aug. 8 on a threat charge after walking into a Springfield, Missouri, Walmart store wearing body armor while carrying a handgun and rifle as a social experiment, the Springfield Police Department reported.
  4. Conor Climo, 23, was arrested on Aug. 9 in Las Vegas and charged with one count of possession of an unregistered firearm in connection to bomb making materials found in his home during an FBI investigation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a press release.
  5. Richard Clayton, 20, of Winter Park, Florida, was arrested on Aug. 9 and charged with making written threats to kill after he made a threat on Facebook saying, “[Three] more days of probation left then I get my AR-15 back. Don’t go to Walmart next week,” according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
  6. An unnamed male was arrested on Aug. 10 on terroristic charges after he posted a threat to social media concerning a Harlingen, Texas, Walmart store, the Harlingen Police Department said in a statement.
  7. A Hattiesburg, Mississippi, teenager was arrested on Aug. 11 for making threats “regarding the potential safety of students at Oak Grove High School,” the school district said in a Facebook post.
  8. Miranda Perez, 28, was arrested on Aug. 11 on threat charges after she wrote on Facebook Messenger, “I’m thinking of doing a school shooting” at the Palm Beach, Florida, elementary school her two children were being moved to, according to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office.
  9. Justin Olsen, 18, was arrested in Boardman, Ohio, on Aug. 12 after law enforcement found 15 long guns, 10 pistols, about 10,000 rounds of ammunition in his house and threats to shoot every federal agent at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives posted online, according to the FBI.
  10. Nathan Clark, 25, was arrested in Charles Town, West Virginia, on Aug. 12 on charges of making terror threats, according to the Jefferson Country Sheriff’s Department. “He was posting that he was a ticking time bomb that had already been diffused, that had already been lit and if necessary was going to kill people and was going to hurt people,” Sheriff Pete Dougherty said.
  11. A 15-year-old girl in Albert Lea, Minnesota, was arrested on Aug. 13 on threat charges for sharing a social media post indicating that she wanted to “shoot up” the town’s high school, the Albert Lea Police Department announced.
  12. Brian Thomas Keck, 35, was arrested on Aug. 13 on a charge of making a terror threat after he called into a Tempe, Arizona, army recruiting center and “said he was going to blow up the recruiting station,” according to a Tempe police report.
  13. Brandon Wagshol, 22, was arrested in Norwalk, Connecticut, on Aug. 15 on four counts of illegal possession of large-capacity magazines. The FBI and Norwalk Police Department revealed that “Wagshol was buying rifle parts online in an attempt to build his own rifle and “had a Facebook post that showed his interest in committing a mass shooting,” Norwalk police said in a statement posted to Facebook.
  14. A 15-year-old girl was arrested on Aug. 15 in Fresno, California, and charged with making a terror threat after she posted a photo of a Walmart display case containing several rifles with the caption, “Don’t come to school tomorrow,” according to the Fresno Police Department.
  15. Two juveniles were arrested on Aug. 16 for sending text messages to students at two schools in Tupelo, Mississippi, warning of a potential school shooting and saying “a lot of people” were “going to die,” Tupelo Police Department officials said during a press conference.
  16. A 14-year-old girl was arrested in Arizona on Aug. 16 on several charges for sending threatening messages toward a school through social media, according to the Tempe Police Department.
  17. A 15-year-old boy was arrested on Aug. 16 on threat charges in Volusia County, Florida, after using the fake name Dalton Barnhart on a video game and saying, “I, Dalton Barnhart, vow to bring my fathers m-15 to school and kill [seven] people at a minimum,” the Volusia Sheriff’s Department said in a Facebook post.
  18. Eric Linn, 35, was arrested in Seattle on Aug. 16 on a charge of making threatening communications after saying on Facebook that he was planning to kill someone in South Florida, as well as all Hispanic people in Miami and other places, the DOJ said in a press release.
  19.  Tristan Scott Wix, 25, was arrested on Aug. 16 in Daytona Beach, Florida, on a charge of making written threats to kill after he sent a text saying he wanted to “break a world record for longest confirmed kill,” according to the Volusia Police Department.
  20. Farhan Sheikh, 19, was arrested in Chicago on Aug. 16 on a charge of transmitting a threat in interstate commerce after threatening to “slaughter and murder any doctor, patient, or visitor” at a women’s reproductive health clinic on a social media platform, according to the DOJ.
  21. James P. Reardon, 20, was arrested on Aug. 17 in New Middletown, Ohio, on charges of telecommunications harassment and aggravated menacing. Reardon posted an Instagram video of a man shooting a semi-automatic weapon with sirens and screams in the background with the caption, “Police identified the Youngstown Jewish Family Community shooter as local white nationalist Seamus O’Rearedon,” even though the shooting never happened, the FBI Cleveland Division reported.
  22. Mark Anthony Dietrich, 18, was arrested in Claremore, Oklahoma, Sunday on charges of threats and violating the Oklahoma Computer Crimes Act after he threatened to kill the families of officers who responded to an incident he was involved in on Aug. 17, the Claremore Police Department said in a statement posted to Facebook.
  23. Arnold Holmes was arrested in Reed City, Michigan, Sunday on three charges including threatening domestic terrorism. Holmes threatened Ferris State University, hospitals and a local Veterans Affairs office in a series of YouTube videos, Osceola County Police Department officials said during a press conference.
  24. Nainoa Gazman Figueroa, 18, was arrested in Maui Monday and charged with terroristic threatening after writing, “Feelin horny might shoot up a school idk yet,” on Twitter, according to the Maui Police Department.
  25. Thomas McVicker, 38, was arrested Monday and charged with interstate transmission of threat to injure after he made “credible threats to conduct a mass shooting and suicide” at a church in Memphis, Tennessee, to his friend, according to court papers.
  26. Daniel Nazarchuk, 37, was arrested in Rapid City, South Dakota, Monday and charged with making terror threats, possession of controlled substance and intentional damage to property after messaging the sheriff’s office and threatening to blow up various government entities, the Rapid City Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook.

Various police departments noted that while some of the suspects are minors, all mass-killing threats must be taken seriously.

The FBI has posted a number of other press releases that detail other threats and weapon seizures not listed above since the El Paso shooting. (RELATED: The White House Is Negotiating Gun Control Legislation With A Pro-Assault Weapons Ban Democrat)

President Donald Trump, after initially expressing interest in expanding gun background checks after over 30 people were shot dead in August, has since cooled on the idea.

“People don’t realize we have very strong background checks right now,” the president told reporters while leaving New Jersey Tuesday, adding that he is “very, very concerned with the Second Amendment.”

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel