A US conspiracy theorist linked to the Wieambilla shooters allegedly held a significant stockpile of weaponry, including five-gallon buckets of ammunition, and made threats to kill five FBI agents, telling them he would “come for every fucking one of you”, court documents reveal.
The FBI arrested Arizona conspiracy theorist Donald Day Jr in December in connection with the religiously motivated terrorist attack at a remote Queensland property in Wieambilla which left two Queensland police officers and a neighbour dead.
Day had regularly interacted with Queenslanders Gareth and Stacey Train, who, along with Gareth’s brother, Nathaniel, perpetrated the police shooting in 2022.
During the standoff, Gareth and Stacey posted a 41-second YouTube video titled “Don’t Be Afraid”, in which they spoke of the killings and expressed their love for “Don”, saying they would “see you at home”.
Day allegedly commented on the video saying “those bastards will regret that they ever fucked with us”.
“Truly from my core, I so wish that I could be with you to do what I do best,” he wrote.
In a subsequent video posted under his username, “Geronimo’s Bones”, Day allegedly said: “The devils come for us, they fucking die. It’s just that simple. We are free people, we are owned by no one.”
The FBI alleges Day’s comments constituted “a threat to injure the person of another, that is any law enforcement individual who comes to Day’s residence”. They also allege he uttered threats against Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization.
A fresh indictment filed this week in the Arizona district court has added additional charges against Day, court documents show.
He is alleged to have possessed weaponry despite being a convicted felon – comprising four handguns, four rifles including an “AK style rifle”, a shotgun and significant amounts of ammunition. The latter allegedly included three five-gallon plastic buckets of ammunition.
He is also accused of threatening five FBI special agents during his arrest.
Day allegedly said: “I’ll tell you this, if anything happens to my wife, and I ever get out of these cuffs, I’ll come for every fucking one of you.”
“How’s that? You better kill me, if you fuck my wife up, you hurt her in any way, you better kill me here and now and just dump my body somewhere … I’m not playing with you guys, I’m not making idle threats here.”
Last month, Day’s lawyers filed a motion to have the case thrown out, seeking to protect his comments under the first amendment.
His lawyers said the indictment failed to allege a “true threat” to commit violence and Day was “therefore protected by the first amendment to the United States constitution”, which covers the right to free speech.
“Even accepting as true the indictment’s assertion that ‘devils’ is code for ‘police officers’ specifically, as opposed to ‘unlawful government actors’ in general, Mr Day’s assertion that if ‘devils come [to kill] us,’ he would respond in kind cannot fairly be read as ‘a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence’.”
His lawyers argued the statements Day allegedly made were not threats against a “person” as required under the statute. Their motion argued the group of persons allegedly threatened by the statement was too vague and ill-defined to constitute a “person”.
