Posted on: May 31, 2024, 06:51h.
Last updated on: May 31, 2024, 06:51h.
The Las Vegas man who claimed he was going to shoot up a local courthouse will spend eight or more years behind bars.
On Thursday, Clark County District Court Judge Tara Clark Newberry told Solomon Brooks, also known as “King Solomon,” 39, he will be serving between eight and 20 years in prison.
He previously was convicted by a jury of making threats or conveying false information concerning an act of terrorism.
The mass shooting threat took place on September 1, when Brooks told another person in a phone call that he was going “shoot up the courthouse,” according to Las Vegas TV station KLAS.
We will raise hell. We will raise hell. There will be a mass shooting at the next court date,” Solomon said, the report added.
The case referred to in the conversation related to a child welfare issue.
Even before the phone call, Solomon made “threatening and intimidating communications to people involved in the child welfare case,” prosecutors claimed.
Link to Sovereign Citizen Movement
It also was revealed in court proceedings that Brooks is affiliated with the sovereign citizen movement. Those in the movement typically reject the laws of the U.S.
Prosecutors gave the case involving Solomon attention, given wider trends occurring in the U.S.
This case comes at a time when law enforcement in Nevada and across the country are seeing an increase in threats to judges and public officials,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Dickerson was quoted by KLAS.
“The sentence in this case reflects the impact of these threats on our justice system and the serious consequences that will come to those seeking and threatening to do harm to our system of justice. This case also exposes the domestic threat and pitfalls of sovereign citizen radicalization, which is a toxic artifice that leads adherents to harm others and, ultimately, their own best interest due to their refusal to recognize the authority of the laws and courts that we all rely upon to uphold our social contract for maintaining a civilized society.”
2017 Mass Shooting
Beyond national trends, the case brings to mind that Las Vegas was the site of the deadliest mass shooting by a sole gunman in U.S. history.
On October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock fired on those who were attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip.
He was perched while in a 32nd-floor room in the Mandalay Bay hotel. Hundreds either died or were wounded. A short time later, he was discovered dead in his hotel room. He had shot himself.
