Before an Arizona man was able to carry out his plan of conducting a mass shooting targeting Black people and other minorities in Atlanta, he was apprehended by police officers while he was en route to execute it.
On June 11, Mark Adams Prieto was indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with trafficking firearms, “transfer of a firearm for use in a hate crime” and possession of an unregistered firearm, according to Fox 5 Atlanta. Per the case’s legal documents, between January and May of 2024, the suspect shared his plan to spark a “race war” via a mass shooting in Atlanta in May with two undercover FBI agents who he thought were helping him.
The 58-year-old was a regular vendor at the Crossroads of the West gun shows, where he allegedly traded firearms he owned by paying in cash to avoid transactions being interrupted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.
On January 21, he shared with a random man, the source and FBI agent, at a gun show that he was going “to incite a race war prior to the 2024 United States Presidential Election” at a rap show in Atlanta. Part of his plan was that he would drop Confederate flags and scream things similar to “KKK all the way” after ringing out a ton of shots.
His comments immediately prompted an investigation that began the same month. After repetitive discussions with the agents about his plans, he eventually sold one of them multiple rifles over four months. Evidence in the indictment led officials to believe Prieto was targeting Bad Bunny‘s Atlanta tour stops at the State Farm Arena since the dates aligned with the Puerto Rican rapper’s May 14 and 15 performances.
On May 14, policemen pulled him over in New Mexico. Following a car search, they discovered seven firearms. Upon securing a search warrant for his home, they found additional guns and an unregistered short-barreled rifle.
During the interrogation process, Prieto confessed to sharing his terrorist attack with the FBI agents but said he was on his way to Florida to visit his mother instead. He also didn’t deny selling an AR-15 to one of the agents and sharing that the rifle “would be a good gun to use in the attack.”
If the elderly man is found guilty of all three charges, he could spend up to 15 years behind bars for each count, along with another 10 years for possessing an unregistered firearm. Plus, there is a chance he may have to pay a fine of $250,000 per charge.
