FBI: Truck driver threatened mass shooting at Memphis church

A TRUCK driver has been arrested after saying he would commit a mass shooting at a church in Memphis, Tennessee, authorities say in newly filed court records.

Thomas Matthew McVicker was apprehended in Indianapolis before the plan could be carried out, according to court papers filed Monday. 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 Thursday, an FBI special agent said in a sworn affidavit.

The circumstances of his arrest in Indiana weren’t outlined in the affidavit.

Earlier this month, a friend of McVicker in the south Alabama town of Fairhope told a Florida FBI officer that McVicker has been considering “shooting a church up” 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 he 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.

The affidavit doesn’t specify a motive, nor does it identify a specific Memphis church. McVicker’s friend did not learn of an exact location from the phone call.