MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WTVF) — The FBI says a truck driver has been arrested after threatening to commit a mass shooting at a Memphis church.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday morning that Thomas Matthew McVicker was arrested in Indianapolis before the plan could be carried out.
The 38-year-old made “credible threats to conduct a mass shooting and suicide” planned for Thursday, an FBI special agent said in a sworn affidavit obtained by the AP.
Earlier this month, a friend of McVicker in Fairhope, Alabama told a Florida FBI agent McVicker has been considering “shooting a church up” or killing people on the street, according to the AP.
Later, in a telephone call, the friend said McVicker told her the church shooting would happen when he was in Memphis on Thursday and that he “intended to take his knife and slit the pastor’s throat.”
The affidavit didn’t specify a motive, nor identify a specific Memphis church. The circumstances of his arrest weren’t known.
It’s the most recent case in a string of men being arrested around the country for threatening to carry out shootings.
