Feds Charge Transgender Suspect With Threatening Repeat of Covenant School Shooting and Other Threats

A balloon with names of the victims is seen at a memorial at the entrance to The Covenant School, in Nashville, Tenn., on March 29, 2023. Wade Payne/AP Photo

Federal authorities arrested a transgender-identifying male suspect this month on multiple charges of communicating violent interstate threats, including threatening to replicate the March 27 shooting at a Christian private school in Nashville, Tennessee.

Authorities arrested Jason Lee Willie, who goes by Alexia Willie, on Nov. 8 on 14 counts of communicating interstate threats to cause injury. According to the indictment, the defendant made calls with numerous users of an online video-chatting platform, MeetMe, during which the defendant allegedly communicated threats to sexually accost children, injure and kill children, and violently attack others.

According to a Nov. 10 proffer of evidence in support of a prosecution motion to detain the defendant, MeetMe’s parent company contacted the FBI National Threat Operation Section on Aug. 14 to alert them to the various threatening comments the defendant allegedly made on the platform.

Court records indicate the defendant at times connected their threats to the Covenant School shooting on March 27, during which a transgender-identifying female suspect entered the private Christian school in Nashville and proceeded to kill six people before she was shot and killed by responding police officers. In an initial press conference addressing the school shooting, Metropolitan Nashville Police Department Chief John Drake said authorities were investigating whether the suspect’s gender identity contributed to their motive for the attack. The suspect’s exact motive in the school shooting case remains unclear, and investigating authorities continue to block the public from seeing a manifesto and other writings the suspect left behind.

The evidence proffer states that just one day after the Nashville school shooting, the FBI was alerted to a Facebook post the defendant allegedly made in which they warned that there would be larger additional attacks on Christians by transgender people. According to the indictment, one of the counts the defendant faces corresponds to a call on MeetMe on or around August of this year in which they allegedly said, “A person in Tennessee walked into one of your schools and shot up a bunch of your Christian daughters. That’s not the last of them if you don’t shut your [expletive] mouth.”

In various other calls described in the indictment, the defendant at times allegedly described having sex with children in bathrooms. In one call, the defendant allegedly said, “I’m openly a pedophile,” while in another, the defendant said, “I’m not a pedo,” but described sexually assaulting children as a means of targeting and hurting their parents. In other calls, the defendant allegedly described killing children. In other calls, the defendant allegedly described killing children.

“There’s a lot of transgenders out here that are tired of being picked on, and we’re going to go into the schools, and we’re going to kill their fucking children out here, and that’s the end of it. We’re at war,” the defendant allegedly said in one of the calls.

At times, the defendant also allegedly directed their threats against members of the black community.

“Listen, Dave Chappelle and all the blacks out here, all the black people out here talking about trannies and [expletive], they ain’t no different than the white supremacists either. You all bow to the same cross [extends middle finger],” the defendant allegedly said before threatening later in that call that “we’re gonna bomb them, we’re gonna bomb them. We’re gonna bomb the churches. We’re gonna bomb them. You know it. We’re going to kill you [expletives].”

In another call, the defendant made repeated use of the n-word, saying, “I catch your [expletive] [racial slurs] in the bathroom, I’m gonna infect them with HIV, [racial slur]. I don’t give a [expletive]. Know it [racial slur].”

According to the evidence proffer, prior to these threatening calls for which the defendant is now charged, the FBI had been previously alerted to threatening comments the defendant made online between 2018 and 2022. In one 2018 Facebook post, the defendant allegedly claimed to have killed a preacher who had molested them, and in another June 2022 Facebook post, the defendant allegedly threatened to unleash “carnage” on churches and schools.

As part of the case, investigators had interviewed a person the defendant lived with, Joseph Kennedy. According to the court records, Mr. Kennedy told investigators that his roommate frequently went online to find and harass Republicans, preachers, and black people in particular. Mr. Kennedy attested that he also heard the defendant make threats about school children but that the defendant never identified any specific schools.

Mr. Kennedy told investigators that there were no firearms in their residence, but that the defendant had been talking about getting a firearm and trying to “find these people” and “kill them.”

Mr. Kennedy said he had previously alerted authorities to the defendant’s threatening activity, including an Aug. 24, 2023, call to the Perry County Sheriff’s Office in which Mr. Kennedy warned that the defendant had described learning how to obtain and use firearms to follow through on their threats. Mr. Kennedy said the defendant had twice threatened to kill him in his sleep.

In an interview with the Sheriff’s Office, Mr. Kennedy said he'd been actively working to find mental health assistance for the defendant.

Interstate communication of a threat to injure is a federal felony offense that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison per offense.

“Law enforcement agencies take threats against children seriously and will extensively investigate adults who threaten to endanger them,” U.S. Attorney Rachelle Aud Crowe said of the case.

From NTD News