A man is being held in jail in Utah after allegedly posting online about “killing as many girls as I see” because he was a virgin and had never had a girlfriend.
Police say Christopher Wayne Cleary, 27, wrote on Facebook about how he planned to become “the next mass shooter” the same weekend women’s marches were being held around the US.
Mr Cleary said he wanted to make the fact that so many women had turned him down “right” by going on a shooting spree, according to jail documents filed by Provo Police.
He is said to have added that there was “nothing more dangerous than a man ready to die”.
Mr Cleary, from Denver, Colorado, was arrested on Saturday after the state’s police raised the alarm with officers in Provo, Utah, where he had checked in to an Airbnb rental a day earlier.
With help from the FBI officers tracked Cleary down to a restaurant, thought to be McDonald’s, and arrested him on suspicion of a felony threat of terrorism charge.
The Facebook posts did not mention the women’s marches but investigators were said to be concerned since they were happening that same day in Provo and Salt Lake City, along with dozens of other cities.
According to police, Cleary acknowledged making the posts, but said he deleted them after receiving threats in response.
He told investigators he had an impulse-control disorder and was suicidal.
Colorado authorities said Mr Cleary was already on probation after stalking and threatening women there, according to Utah police documents.
He is being held without bail in Utah, and authorities are expected to seek his extradition to Colorado.
If the attack had been carried out, it could have become the latest massacre by a man linked to the “Incel” – involuntary celibacy – community.
A spotlight was shone on the Incel community in May 2014 when Elliot Rodger went on a knife and gun rampage, killing six people in Isla Vista, California, before shooting himself.
The London-born 22 year old, whose filmmaker father Peter Rodger was assistant director on The Hunger Games films, emailed a 137-page “manifesto” detailing his plans to kill some 30 people including his parents just minutes earlier.
In a video uploaded to YouTube the day before the massacre, Rodger described his plans to shoot women and promised retribution for his “loneliness and frustration” at never having had a girlfriend and for being a virgin.
In a chilling echo on 23 April 2018, 25-year-old Alek Minassian killed 10 people and injured many more after driving a van into pedestrians in Toronto, Canada.
He faces 10 counts of murder and 13 counts of attempted murder at a trial expected to begin in 2020.
Shortly before the 2019=8 attack, a post appeared on the suspect’s now-deleted Facebook profile praising Rodger.
“The Incel Rebellion has already begun,” the post said. “We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys.”
“Chads” and “Stacys” are terms used within the Incel community to refer to attractive men and women.
The label “Incel” is thought to have originated in Canada where a female college student, known only as Alana, set up a website called “Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project” to discuss her sexual inactivity in 1993. In 1997 she set up a mailing list on the topic using the abbreviation “Incel” – and a community of lonely people began.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
