Homegrown terrorismFBI Foils Neo‑Nazi Plot to Blow Up Missouri Hospital

FBI agents on Tuesday shot and killed a white supremacist in Belton, Missouri while trying to arrest him for plotting to use a car bomb to blow up a local hospital overflowing with patients.

Timothy Wilson, 36, was the subject of a “months-long domestic terrorism investigation”, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force said.

The New York Times reports that Wilson was being monitored because he was seen as a “potentially violent extremist” driven by racial and religious hatred. Wilson social media postings and emails show that he considered several targets for a bombing, including a school with a large number of black students, a mosque, and a synagogue, the FBI said.

He began to focus on hospitals as targets because the coronavirus pandemic filled hospitals, thus offering him better targets for killing more people.

“With the current health crisis, Wilson decided to accelerate his plan to use a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device in an attempt to cause severe harm and mass casualties,” the FBI said. The hospital that he had planned to bomb was “providing critical medical care in today’s environment.”

The shooting began when Wilson, who lived with his grandmother, tried to collect what he believed was a crucial part for the bomb in his home city of Belton, near Kansas. Instead FBI agents were there to arrest him.

According to The Informant, Wilson was linked to two neo-Nazi groups, one of which holds an annual rally to celebrate the birth of Hitler.

In a neo-Nazi group chat Wilson promoted far-right conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. He wrote that the virus was being used by the government as an “excuse to destroy our people”, adding: “Mark my words it’s coming I hope people are ready.” He also claimed that “this whole thing was engineered by Jews as a power grab … Jews have been playing the long game we are the only ones standing in their way.”