FBI Arrests South Carolina Man Planning Attack 'In The Spirit Of Dylann Roof'
The FBI arrested a South Carolina man with white supremacist connections that told an undercover FBI agent he wanted to commit an attack on non-whites "in the spirit of Dylann Roof."
Benjamin Thomas Samuel McDowell, 29, was arrested by the FBI on Wednesday at around 5 p.m. after he told an undercover FBI agent he wanted to secure a gun to carry out attacks. McDowell believed the agent was someone who "handled problems for the Aryan nations," a South Carolina NBC affiliate reported. McDowell told the agent he wanted to get away with an attack on non-whites that was large in scale.
"If I could do something on a f****** big scale and write on the f****** building or whatever, 'In the spirit of Dylann Roof," McDowell allegedly told the undercover agent during a meeting at a Myrtle Beach hotel Jan. 12. Roof killed nine people at a historic black church in Charleston in 2015 and was recently sentenced to death for his crimes.
According to court records, local police said McDowell had established connections with white supremacy groups while serving a prison sentence in South Carolina, WMBF News reported. On Jan. 5, McDowell write an ant-Semitic rant on Facebook that included the phrase : "you want to post if you ain’t got the heart to fight for Yahweh like dylann roof did you need to shut the f***** up…" A day later, the FBI identified a message on Facebook Instant Messenger from McDowell in which he was looking for gun, using the slang term "iron" for the weapon.
McDowell faces a felony firearm possession charge, the NY Daily News reported. Records on the J. Reuben Long Detention Center website indicated that McDowell was released Thursday morning.
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