FBI: Truck driver threatened mass shooting at Memphis church

AP-US--Mass Shooting Threats-Truck Driver,12th Ld-Writethru

Associated Press

A truck driver who threatened to "shoot up" a church in Memphis and said he was haunted by "spiritual snakes and spiders" people put in his bed was arrested in Indiana, less than a week before the day of the planned attacks, authorities said in newly filed court records.

Thomas Matthew McVicker was arrested in Indianapolis on Friday, according to a criminal complaint unsealed this week. It's the most recent case in a string of men being arrested around the country for threatening to carry out shootings.

McVicker, 38, made "credible threats to conduct a mass shooting and suicide" planned for this coming Thursday, an FBI special agent said in a sworn affidavit.

He was arrested by Indiana State Police and the FBI, said Chris Bavender, an FBI spokeswoman in Indianapolis.

Earlier this month, a friend of McVicker in Fairhope, Ala., told a Florida FBI officer McVicker had been considering a mass shooting at a church or killing people on the street.

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."

His mother told the FBI McVicker owned a Ruger P90 handgun and sometimes uses cocaine and methamphetamine. She also said her son is being treated for schizophrenia. McVicker told his Alabama friend "evil entities entered his body and are torturing him," the affidavit states.

The friend asked McVicker why he wanted to kill innocent people, and he said "they put spiritual snakes and spiders in my bed at night," the FBI agent wrote. "I've only seen them a couple of times but they take form and I can feel them crawling on me and under me," the affidavit states.

The FBI says it confirmed with McVicker's employer that he requested leave time Thursday and that he indicated in the request that he would spend the leave time in Memphis, the affidavit states.