Police in Ohio say they pursued and killed a man they believed was trying to break into the FBI’s Cincinnati field office on ThursdaCounty officials in Ohio said the guy was wearing body armor and had what appeared to be an AR-15 rifle and a nail gun. 

County officials in Ohio said the guy was wearing body armor and had what appeared to be an AR-15 rifle and a nail gun. 

The state highway patrol identified him as 42-year-old Ricky W. Shiffer of Columbus on Friday.

Two law enforcement sources staed that Shiffer was already known to the FBI due to his ties to a far-right extremist group and his involvement in an undisclosed riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

An online profile associated with Shiffer appears to have made reference to an effort to storm an FBI office on that day. After the FBI executed a search warrant at the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump on Monday, his campaign also issued a “call to arms” and urged for violence against the agency. The suspect’s ownership of the account has not been verified by the authorities.

Our current knowledge of the attempted break-in and the perpetrator is as follows:

According to the FBI, at around 9:15 a.m. ET on Thursday, an armed man attempted to break into the FBI field office through the visitor screening facility.

Following the triggering of an alert and the arrival of armed FBI special agents, the suspect ran northbound on Interstate 71, according to a statement released by FBI Cincinnati.

According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, at 9:37 a.m., officers responded to a call about a suspicious Ford Crown Victoria at an interstate rest area.

Highway patrol spokesman Lt. Nathan Dennis said the pursuit began after troopers attempted to conduct a traffic check but the subject evaded capture. During the pursuit, shots were fired from the suspect’s vehicle, he claimed.

At around 9:53 a.m., the suspect got off the interstate at state Route 73 in Clinton County, Ohio, the highway patrol said. This is about 45 miles northeast of downtown Cincinnati.

The highway patrol stated the man “engaged officers” after he got out of his car. They said law police opened fire and the suspect returned fire while taking cover in his vehicle.

It was reported by the Clinton County Emergency Management Agency that the suspect was outfitted with body armor. The government announced a lockdown in force within a mile of the vicinity of the standoff.

The highway patrol reported that the standoff lasted for a number of hours as officers attempted to talk with the culprit.

Once authorities saw that conversations weren’t going anywhere, they tried to take the man into custody using less lethal tactics, the agency claimed. In the words of the authorities: “At about 3:42 p.m., the suspect raised a pistol and shots were fired.”

According to the agency, the suspect was shot and later died from his wounds at the site.

The FBI has stated that it is looking into what led up to the shooting of the suspect.
It’s not apparent what, if any, nonlethal measures were used by officials to try to apprehend him.

A federal law enforcement source also stated that the FBI was looking into Shiffer’s online activity to determine if he was connected to right-wing extremism.

Shiffer’s name was attached to a tweet on Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, on Thursday morning, which seemed to allude to an attempted raid on an FBI building.

Minutes after 9:15 a.m., when the Ohio State Highway Patrol reported the incident at the Cincinnati office had begun, the message was published.

“Well, I thought I had a way through bullet proof glass, and I didn’t,” the user posted at 9:29 a.m. Thursday. “If you don’t hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I., and it’ll mean either I was taken off the internet, the F.B.I. got me, or they sent the regular cops while.”

While it’s possible the user had more to say, their post abruptly ends after the word “while.”

Due to an ongoing investigation, the FBI has chosen not to comment on the account or its contents. According to a law enforcement official quoted by CNN, a photograph on the account matched a government ID photo of Shiffer.

This account has been online for a matter of weeks, and in that time the user has been communicating with others while expressing growing political violence and revolutionary ideas.

The user became obsessed with the idea of retaliating violently against the FBI after they carried out a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday.

“People, this is it,” “I hope a call to arms comes from someone better qualified, but if not, this is your call to arms from me.”

The poster urged readers to “grab whatever you need to be ready for war” from local pawn shops and gun shops.

The Shiffer user said, “Bring them on” after another member said they were going to report him to the FBI.

The information may or may not have been given to the FBI.

The user said on Tuesday that a number of people were planning to meet up in Palm Beach, Florida, near Mar-a-Lago, and threatened to “murder them” if the FBI intervened to disperse the gathering.

The account holder also said he was in the nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, however he did not specify whether or not he visited the Capitol building. The ad repeatedly referred to the conspiracy theory that Trump will be elected in 2020 despite having no legitimate chance of winning.

According to two law enforcement sources  on Friday, Shiffer was already on the FBI’s radar owing to his ties to the violence in January 2021 and his friends within the Proud Boys. The leader of the far-right extremist group known as the Proud Boys, as well as several other top members of the group, were charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the assault in 2021.

According to the two sources, the inquiry into Shiffer’s possible involvement in the disturbance in January of 2021 is ongoing. At the time of the fatal shooting, lawmakers were gathered to officially declare Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

His declassified military papers show that Shiffer served in the US Navy from 1998 until June of 2003. He was in charge of the weapons systems on board a US Navy submarine and worked as a fire control technician.

According to the FBI, the “agent-involved shooting” is being looked into at the agency’s headquarters. According to a law enforcement source, the FBI has sent a Shooting Incident Review Team to the site after an FBI special agent or task force officer fired a firearm.

According to the source, the review team will collect evidence and interview witnesses to evaluate if the use of fatal force was appropriate.

All gunshot events involving FBI agents or task force members are taken very seriously, according to an FBI statement. The evaluation is comprehensive, impartial, and completed as quickly as possible given the circumstances.

On Thursday night, FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a statement denouncing recent attacks on law enforcement and the agency.

“Unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others. Violence and threats against law enforcement, including the FBI, are dangerous and should be deeply concerning to all Americans,” Wray said.

A law enforcement official reported on Friday that since the search of Mar-a-Lago, the FBI has received an unusual number of threats against its people and property.

The identities of the agents were blacked out in the unsealed court documents, but they were not in the version of the search warrant that made its way into the public domain. Information about the two agents who attested to the warrant filing has gone viral.

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