Man hoped to incite pre-election race war with mass shooting at Atlanta rap concert: FBI
An Arizona man plotted a mass shooting at a rap concert more than 1,600 miles away in hopes of inciting a race war ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
An FBI source tipped off authorities to the plan last October after running into Mark Adams Prieto at gun shows since 2020, and once they got around to discussing politics the individual became alarmed by his comments about massacring Black people, Jews and Muslims, reported WSB-TV.
“Prieto believes that martial law will be implemented shortly after the 2024 election and that a mass shooting should occur prior to the implementation of martial law,” FBI agents said in an affidavit, adding that he asked the source if they were “ready to kill a bunch of people.”
Investigators learned Prieto worked as a gun show vendor in Prescott, where he sold firearms from his personal collection and, according to the source, conducted "off-book" trades to avoid scrutiny from law enforcement, and undercover agents met with him in mid-January.
He "only made small talk" on the first day of the Crossroads of the West gun show but opened up when the undercover agents returned the next day and divulged his plan for a mass shooting at an unspecified rap concert and told them why he was targeting the city, according to investigators.
"The reason I say Atlanta, why?" Prieto said, according to court documents. "Why is Georgia such a [expletive]-up state now? When I was a kid that was one of the most conservative states in the country. Why is it not now? Because as the crime got worse in L.A., St. Louis, and all these other cities, all the [expletives] moved out of those [places] and moved to Atlanta. That’s why it isn’t so great anymore, and they’ve been there for a couple, several years.”
Prieto intended to leave Confederate flags at the shooting scene send a message “that we’re going to fight back now, and every whitey will be the enemy across the whole country,” according to the affidavit, and he told the confidential source and undercover agents he would show "no mercy" because he did not believe Black people "have any feeling."
"They’re not people," he allegedly said. "They’re monsters, as far as I’m concerned.”
While under surveillance in February, agents watched Prieto go into a gun show in Phoenix with two rifles and immediately ask the confidential source if they were still planning to participate in the attack with the undercover agent, investigators said.
He made clear on multiple occasions his attack was racially motivated and intended to shout "KKK all the way" to make clear the shooting was not "gang-related."
Prieto allegedly sold a gun to the undercover agent in February for $2,000, and the following month he told undercover agents that the attack must be carried out before martial law was imposed following the election.
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He intended to carry out the massacre at a Bad Bunny concert at State Farm Arena on May 14 and May 15, but he later decided to push the attack until sometime in June, but he was stopped last month by law enforcement in New Mexico while traveling to visit his mother in Florida.
"Prieto was in possession of seven firearms and was taken into federal custody," the Department of Justice said in a statement. "Law enforcement then executed a search warrant at his home in Prescott. Law enforcement found more firearms in his residence, including an unregistered short-barreled rifle."
He was indicted on charges for firearms trafficking, transfer of a firearm for use in a hate crime and possession of an unregistered firearm, and, if convicted, he faces decades in prison.