Man Pleads Guilty to Threatening to Blow Up Arizona Mosque
Michael J. Hanson, 37, pleaded guilty to communicating a terroristic threat. He will be sentenced later this month.
On March 24 at about 12:28 a.m., Avondale police were called to the West Valley Islamic Center, which is located at 10320 W McDowell Road, by a man saying he needed to be "talked down," the court documents say.
Officers found Hanson in the parking lot of the center. He allegedly told officers that he had been watching the movie "American Sniper" and then looked up the nearest mosque to his home.
While talking to Hanson, officers noticed that he was slurring his words and that his breath smelled like alcohol, the documents state.
Hanson then called a Lyft, as the officers told him he was not fit to drive home, and while he waited to be picked up, he told the officers, "I'm going to bomb that place," talking about WVIC, but then added, "Nah, I can't say that, I can't say that, that's terrorist," according to the narrative in the court documents.
Hanson allegedly told the officers he hates Muslims and originally came to WVIC as "a show of force," but then tried to take the statements back after saying them, the narrative continued.
Officers also saw Hanson "heckling" people who walked into WVIC, the documents say.
The court documents also say that Hanson asked the officers, "Is it racist that I hate Muslims?" Before confirming aloud that he did.
About half an hour after Hanson left WVIC in the Lyft, officers found him in the parking lot once again and noticed that he was trying to hide in a dumpster. Hanson then told the officers he was "trying to pull a fast one on them." Hanson was then taken back to his home in Goodyear just before 3 a.m., according to the documents.
Later that day, when investigating this incident, Avondale police contacted the Goodyear Police Department, who said he was known to them and that he was a veteran who had done a nine-month deployment to Iraq. Hanson had told GPD he suffers from PTSD and had been treated at the VA hospital for mental health issues, the court documents state.
Avondale police then began the process of getting a mental health evaluation performed on Hanson when they learned he called 911 in Goodyear and said he was going to go "down there and cause havoc," but nothing else, according to the documents.
Avondale officers then went back out to Hanson's home, took him into custody and explained the mental health evaluation process, the documents say. As the officers were taking Hanson to be evaluated, he allegedly told them he was going to "find where they lived and destroy everything they owned," and that he had "began paying to the 'cartel's god of death" so that officers would have a gruesome death."
Hanson was then read his Miranda rights and interviewed, according to the narrative.
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During his interview with Avondale police, he said that he didn't mean anything that he had previously said, that he was in a bad place and denied owning materials to make a bomb or knowing how to make a bomb, according to the court documents.
He also denied making the bomb threat and that he was sorry. He was then turned over for mental health treatment, the documents state.
Detectives then seized Hanson's cell phone, which he provided the code for. After obtaining a search warrant, detectives found Hanson's search history, which included "Phoenix law firms," "Muslim hotline," "crisis hotline," AZ FBI phone number, and a search for "Christians being mutilated," the court documents say.
The documents also describe several one-on-one text message conversations and group chats that Hanson took part in while watching "American Sniper." In the conversations, he talked about the movie's triggering effect on his PTSD, how after watching the movie, "my hate for Muslims came back up," that Muslims "are evil and corrupted the Bible of Jesus."
Detectives also found three group chats where he allegedly threatened to kill Muslims, according to the documents, with one of them specifically talking about the West Valley Islamic Center, as he sent a picture of the building and a list of WVIC's board members and then said "I'm going there and killing them all."
On March 27 at about 12:45 p.m., Hanson was arrested. He has been booked into the Maricopa County Jail.
Source: 12news.com
