Authorities in Palm Beach County said on Wednesday that a person who allegedly picked seven different locations to do a mass shooting had an arsenal of weapons and ammunition has been detained.
On Tuesday, Damien Blade Allen, 22, was detained in the Palm Beach County prison and charged with one count of unlawful use of a symbol or an act of power while posing as a deputy for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
According to a possible cause affidavit, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office police learned of Allen from an FBI Guardian idea, equivalent to one used to stop violence. The 15-year-old girl who killed a scholar and a professor at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin in December, had been communicating with Allen on TikTok for the entire previous time.
FBI officials in Milwaukee reviewed the information on the Wisconsin large shooter’s smartphone in early April, revealing clear messages with Allen, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Their conversations about Allen and the Wisconsin shooter’s weapons and ammunition, potential locations for mass killings, and passionate interest in one another, according to the affidavit, were discussed between at least May and September 2024.
Capt. Ric Bradshaw and Judge At a press conference on Wednesday evening, Randy Foley claimed Allen had 12, 000 rounds of ammunition and what are thought to be completely automated firearms. According to Foley, investigators are also looking into whether he legally owned all of the weaponry.
” Obviously, this is one of the best prosecutions that I’ve seen in a long time, that has prevented people from dying because I guarantee you, he was going to accomplish that,” Bradshaw said.
Allen wrote,” I got 7 places I would, Affect the officers dept.,” in a message to the child. also include ( Guerrilla ) warfare strategies like ambushing and blitzing, according to the affidavit.
The areas Allen mentioned are not included in the oath or any of the text messages, besides from a police department. Foley claimed at the news conference that he remembered two instances as being “racially determined” and that one was a church.
We go over together, Allen wrote to the woman in a separate message sent in June, about six weeks before the shooting in Wisconsin. She responded,” Right. The petition stated,” I love you.”
Prior to the Wisconsin school shooting, Allen had stopped using the talk and had not used it since, according to the affidavit. He had a habit of conversing with a large number of individuals online almost daily.
Allen’s social media profiles even featured him wearing an authentic Group B PBSO even, according to the affidavit, which included patches in the appropriate places, a title tag with the word” Allen” and an Emergency Field Force button. Along with a firearm and Taser, he also had the same kind of weapon belt and revolvers as the Sheriff’s Office people.
Allen was seen in the pilot’s seat of a Ford Crown Victoria, a vehicle frequently used by legislation protection, with” a system that looks like a PBSO computer in a computer stand,” according to the oath in an Instagram video posted in October 2022.
According to the affidavit, FBI officials initially believed that Allen was a lieutenant based on the social media posts. The Sheriff’s Office’s internal affairs department received a call from FBI Miami that revealed he was hardly a lieutenant.
A PBSO detective filed a temporary, risk-protection order ( RPO ) petition in court on Monday that allows law enforcement to seize guns and ammunition from the person who the petition is aimed at for a predetermined amount of time. The demand was granted by a judge.
Lawyers are requesting that Allen remain in custody while the investigation is pending.
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