COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSYX) \u2014 Federal authorities say they disrupted an alleged terror plot targeting the UFC Freedom 250 fight at the White House, and court documents indicate one of the suspects is a 19-year-old from central Ohio.<\/p>\n
WSYX<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Five people are now in custody, including Tycen Proper, 19, who according to court documents is from Knox County.<\/p>\n
FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency became aware of the alleged plot on June 10. The FBI said 23 people were allegedly in Signal chats discussing \u201cpre-operational plans.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to court documents, Proper lives with his parents in Knox County, where family members became concerned after he allegedly purchased firearms, body armor, ammunition and tactical gear. The documents reveal relatives were also worried when he began communicating with a group of people online.<\/p>\n
Investigators said Proper’s family called local police, tipping them off to the alleged plot. Then, the FBI became involved. <\/p>\n
“Thank goodness for the mom and dad taking the steps to contact the Knox County Sheriff’s Office and then on to the FBI,” said Harry Trombitas, a retired FBI agent. “They may have prevented a very serious matter, possibly a mass shooting.”<\/p>\n
According to the complaint, agents uncovered online communications that allegedly discussed reconnaissance missions, weapons, drones and plans for violence in Washington, D.C. Federal investigators said Proper admitted to participating in planning discussions and was identified as a leader within the group.<\/p>\n
“When you you go about collecting, purchasing weapons and and doing reconnaissance and things like that, that indicates that you’re serious about your plan, and you’re about to act out, and I think they were on the threshold of acting out,” Trombitas said. <\/p>\n
Court documents include that Proper’s family members said he recently made “sympathetic comments about Adolf Hitler” and was speaking with people who expressed “ultra-religious and anti-government” sentiments, specifically grievances about government corruption. According to investigators, Proper’s mom recently saw him doing physical training. <\/p>\n
“We call them injustice collectors,” said Trombitas. “They can’t let things go. And so they decide that they’re going to have to act out violently. “<\/p>\n
ABC 6 met one of Proper’s childhood friends in Danville. He said he was shocked by the allegations. <\/p>\n
“How, like what happened? How did he get there? It\u2019s crazy. I can\u2019t wrap my brain around it.” said the childhood friend. <\/p>\n
Proper now faces a list of federal charges, including conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States and attempted murder of a federal officer or employee. He is scheduled to be in federal court on June 17. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSYX) \u2014 Federal authorities say they disrupted an alleged terror plot targeting the UFC Freedom 250…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-709970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}