Md. man threatened shooting, officials say

Associated Press

PALMER PARK, Md.

Calling himself “a joker,” a Maryland man with an arsenal of guns threatened to shoot up a business he was being fired from, and was wearing a T-shirt that said “Guns don’t kill people. I do” when police confronted him, authorities said Friday.

The 28-year-old man, identified in a search warrant as Neil E. Prescott, told a supervisor at software and mailroom supplier Pitney Bowes that he wanted to see his boss’s “brain splatter all over the sidewalk,” according to a search warrant.

“I’m a joker, and I’m gonna load my guns and blow everybody up,” Prescott said, according to the warrant.

The threats were made repeatedly in two separate phone calls this week, and investigators who searched Prescott’s apartment Friday morning found several thousand rounds of ammunition and about two dozen semi-automatic rifles and pistols. The weapons so far appear to have been purchased legally but still are being examined, said Mike Campbell, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Prescott was taken into custody at his apartment Friday and was receiving a psychiatric evaluation at a hospital.