A firearms dealer in Arizona sold weapons to an undercover federal agent he believed would help him carry out his plan for a mass shooting targeting minorities at an Atlanta concert venue, an attack that he hoped would “incite a race war,” according to a federal grand jury indictment.
Mark Adams Prieto was indicted Tuesday by the grand jury in Arizona on charges of firearms trafficking, transferring a firearm for use in a hate crime, and possession of an unregistered firearm.
Court records didn’t list an attorney who could comment on Prieto’s behalf. A lawyer who briefly represented Prieto after he was arrested last month in neighboring New Mexico didn’t respond Wednesday to a request for comment.
The indictment says the 58-year-old from Prescott, Arizona, recruited the undercover FBI agent and an informant at a gun show where Prieto was a vendor.
According to the indictment, Prieto told them he’d been thinking about carrying out a mass killing of minority groups for some time in order “to incite a race war” ahead of the presidential election in November. Prieto later identified a rap concert in Atlanta on May 14-15 for the attack, the indictment alleges. Rapper Bad Bunny performed at State Farm Arena those nights without incident.
