Federal officials say a man from Arizona planned to kill many African Americans and other minorities at a rap concert in Atlanta in May. He did this to start a race war before the presidential election.
Mark Adams Prieto was charged by a federal grand jury on Tuesday with trafficking weapons, giving someone a gun to use in a hate crime, and having a gun that isn’t registered. The FBI looked into him for months and arrested him last month, which led to the charge, the Justice Department said. A spokesperson for the office said that the U.S. Marshals Service has Prieto in their custody and will take him from New Mexico to Arizona. When asked for a comment, his lawyer did not answer right away.
An anonymous source told FBI Phoenix in October that a person, later identified as Prieto, had said they wanted to start a race war before the presidential election. This is when the investigation into the 58-year-old Prescott resident started. The person told the police that they had talked to Prieto at different gun shows more than fifteen times in three years. The chats went from being about small talk to politics, according to the statement. According to the affidavit, the source told the police that Prieto started making strange and scary comments about Black people, Jews, and Muslims within the last year, including “advocating for a mass shooting.”
According to the affidavit, the source said, “Prieto believes that martial law will be implemented shortly after the 2024 election and that a mass shooting should occur prior to its implementation.” He also asked the source in late 2023 if they were “ready to kill a bunch of people,” which showed authorities that he wanted to get people to help him carry out an attack.
The affidavit says that Prieto sold guns at gun shows in Prescott and would trade guns from his own collection. To avoid the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, he would only do deals or trades for cash, and this was confirmed by tracking with the help of the source.
From January to March, the FBI kept an eye on Prieto.
At a gun show in Phoenix on January 21, Prieto told the source and an undercover FBI agent pretending to be the source’s friend that he wanted them to help him carry out a mass shooting in Atlanta that would target African Americans at an unnamed rap event.
The affidavit says Prieto said, “The reason I say Atlanta. Ga is such an f——up state right now. While I was young, that state had some of the strictest laws in the country. Why not right now? Because as crime rose in L.A., St. Louis, and other towns, the [N-word] people left those areas and moved to Atlanta. That’s why it’s not so great now. And they’ve been there for a few years or more.
The suspect also said he wanted to attack a rap concert because there would be a lot of African Americans there. He planned to leave confederate flags behind after the shooting to send a message that “we’re going to fight back now, and every whitey will be the enemy across the whole country” and to yell “whities out here killing, what’s we gonna do” and “KKK all the way.” Prieto said he would have “no mercy, no quarter.”
Prieto is also said to have told the source and undercover agent about the kinds of weapons he planned to use and suggested that they go to Atlanta before the attack to store weapons there. He also reportedly told them that a high body count was the most important thing.
The document says, “He specifically said that the attack should happen after Super Tuesday so that they would know who was running for office.”
A month later, while being watched, Prieto went to a gun show in Phoenix and went to the source’s booth. There, he asked the source and the undercover agent if they were still planning to take part in the attack, according to the statement. Prieto is said to have sold the undercover agent a gun for $2,000 on the second day of that gun show in February.
At a gun show in Prescott Valley on March 23, Prieto told the undercover agent that he still planned to carry out the attack. He said that if they waited until after the election, “they might have everything set up so that you can’t even drive; you’ll be stopped,” according to the statement. Based on the affidavit, he also said that the event he was after would probably be a rap show at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena on May 14 and 15, or sometime in June or July. The authorities didn’t say what show it was, but the dates given for May match up with two nights when Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny was set to play at that arena. The affidavit says that Prieto told the undercover agent that he wanted them to wear hoodies because he thought that no one would think anything wrong with someone wearing a hoodie to a rap event. Based on the affidavit, Prieto is said to have sold the undercover agent an AR-15 rifle the next day for $1,000 and told him to use it in the attack and bring as many magazines as he could take.
It says that the undercover agent asked Prieto at a different gun show in Prescott Valley in April if the attack would still happen in May. Prieto said he wanted to move it up. Prieto was caught on May 14 on a New Mexico highway. He said that he knew the undercover agent and the confidential source and that he had talked with them about attacking a public place in Atlanta that looked like a “rock” event where young people and minorities would be.
The document says, “However, he told agents that he did not plan to carry out the attack.” There are also claims that he told the undercover agent that he sold them an AR-15 and that it would be a good gun to use in the attack. The statement also says he told police he had more guns at home and five guns in his car. Then, police performed a search warrant at his home and found more guns, including an unregistered short-barreled rifle, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Source: NBC News
