A Virginia man facing the possibility of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty Wednesday to making threats by interstate communication told a federal judge he never intended to carry out the threats.
Shawn Raikeen Wallace, 41, of Norfolk, Va., pleaded guilty to making multiple threatening phone calls to federal, state and local police over a three-day period in December 2020 that culminated in his arrest in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Dec. 30, 2020.
Wallace told Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. that he made the threats out of frustration over a lack of action by Arkansas police in finding a car that Wallace said was stolen from him in early 2020.
Wallace's assertion that his threats were made out of frustration, and he never intended to be acted upon resulted in Marshall calling a brief recess to make sure the legal requirements for Wallace's plea had been met.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Wallace made numerous telephone calls to FBI field offices in Little Rock and around the country, the Little Rock Police Department, Arkansas State Police, the FBI National Threat Operations Center and the Stuttgart Police Department. Using an internet application to disguise his phone number, the affidavit said, Wallace threatened to blow up the Arkansas Capitol building, the governor's office, Washington, D.C., and the Stuttgart Police Department.
The affidavit said the previous November and early December, Wallace had made similar threats to the Stuttgart Police Department, saying he was going to blow up the police station and shoot police personnel. The threats led to the police station being locked down for a time.
Wallace was arrested by Colorado Springs police on Dec. 30, 2020, and following an initial appearance and bond hearing in federal court in Denver was transferred to Arkansas for prosecution. He was ordered to remain in jail until his trial.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron McCree said if the case were to go to trial, the government could prove that Wallace made numerous threatening phone calls Dec. 24, 2020, beginning with the FBI field office in Little Rock at 1:46 a.m. McCree said Wallace did not identify himself but was later identified by investigators.
McCree said Wallace wanted to make a complaint against the Stuttgart Police Department and was advised on the procedure to register a complaint. Not long after, McCree said, a frustrated Wallace called back to the FBI office in Little Rock.
"Mr. Wallace screamed, 'I'm gonna blow s**t up,' and 'if it have to happen on Christmas Day, so be it,' and the people were going to, 'feel that s**t,'" McCree said. He said a little while later Wallace called the FBI field office in Washington, D.C., and said he was going to commit a terrorist act in Arkansas on Christmas Day if his complaint was not investigated.
"Specifically, Mr. Wallace said he was going to blow up the Arkansas State Capitol building," McCree said. "He also referred to the explosion like that of the Oklahoma City bombing."
The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was destroyed April 19, 1995, by a truck bomb using ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel, killing 168 people.
After Wallace -- who appeared in court over a video-conference link from the Pulaski County jail -- pleaded guilty, Marshall questioned him further about the offense.
"Was that you ... saying you were going to blow up the Arkansas Capitol building on Christmas Day unless certain things happened?" Marshall asked.
"That was me," Wallace replied.
"Why did you ... tell them that you were going to blow up the Arkansas Capitol?" Marshall asked.
"My car had gotten stolen and the Stuttgart Police Department had found my vehicle and refused to recover it, so I was trying to make a complaint to the FBI because the Stuttgart Police Department had used a racial slur against me and I was upset," Wallace said. "That's where that stemmed from."
Under further questioning, Wallace said his car had been stolen in Dallas in March 2020 and driven to Stuttgart, and that he had been trying, without success, to get Stuttgart police to act on it.
"My actual intent," Wallace said, "the threat was made, but I made the threat with the intention of getting a supervisor on the phone because when I called there it was just a dispatcher, and the dispatcher was refusing to get me a supervisor or a higher-up. ... I didn't make it with the intention of following through."
Wallace told Marshall that his frustration on Christmas Eve resulted from a combination of spending the holiday away from his family in Virginia after having spent nine months trying to get the theft of his car addressed with no results.
Wallace said his anger boiled over after being routed from one agency to another in his effort to try and resolve the matter.
"My family is in Virginia, and I'm in Colorado," he said. "It was Christmas Eve, so I kind of had the bah humbugs a little bit and all of it came together at the same time."
After a brief recess to research the level of intent required to enable Wallace to legally plead to the offense, Marshall accepted his plea. Wallace is to be sentenced after completion of a pre-sentencing report to be prepared and submitted by the U.S. Probation Office.
A message left Wednesday afternoon with the Stuttgart Police Department seeking comment was not returned.