A 20-year-old man is the third person arrested in less than a week for threatening mass killings in the name of a murderous white supremacist Dylann Roof.
Dakota Reed, 20, was arrested at his mother’s home in Lake Forest Park, Washington on Friday, the county’s Daily Herald first reported. Reed, according to social media posts and YouTube videos reviewed by the Herald, is a neo-Nazi who also pledged allegiance to the Ku Klux Klan and a white supremacist separatist movement based in the Pacific Northwest. Reed posed with multiple semi-automatic rifles in those posts and made explicit threats to murder Jewish people.
At least one of the threats invoked Roof, a white supremacist who murdered nine black worshippers at a South Carolina church in 2015. Reed is the third young white person recently arrested over threats mentioning Roof. Earlier this week, FBI agents arrested a twentysomething Toledo, Ohio couple who allegedly planned a mass shooting. One of the pair, Elizabeth Lecron, allegedly sent letters and Nazi literature to Roof in prison. She is one of only four people the mass murder is known to have corresponded with while he sits on death row.
ADVERTISEMENT
Reed’s arrest is also the second arrest in recent days by a young man threatening to murder Jews. Independent of the Roof-inspired couple, a different Toledo, Ohio man was arrested for allegedly planning a synagogue shooting. Damon Joseph, 21, allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS, and told and undercover FBI agent that he was inspired by the man who murdered 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October.
From a series of pseudonymous Facebook pages, Reed allegedly announced plans for “pulling a Dylan[n] Roof” at a school or synagogue, according to the Herald.
Reed’s Facebook and YouTube accounts (where he used the name of a high-ranking Nazi officer) were reportedly filled with threats against Jews, including a video showing off an AR-15 rifle and fantasizing about killing a rabbi.
Reed appears to have had extensive access to guns. Court records reviewed by the Herald state that he shared pictures with of himself holding six rifles, a shotgun, and a pistol.
In late October, he posted that he was “over here saving up to buy more guns and ammo to kill (((rats))) and animals.” The triple parentheses are a white supremacist meme used to denote Jewish people.
Earlier this month, he posted that his parents had questioned why owned so many guns.
“To kill people,” he wrote of his answer. “Why else would I own them?”On Monday, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s office sought an “extreme risk restraining order,” against him court records show. The order would bar him from gun ownership. He is also facing charges for making threats and violating Washington’s hate crime statute.
