Virginia educator accused of plotting ICE attacks with explosive rounds
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FIRST ON FOX: Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security told Fox News Digital that the agency’s Investigative unit has now charged a Virginia educator and his brother with plotting to attack ICE with potentially explosive bullets.
Kempsville High School assistant principal John Wilson Bennett and his older brother, Mark Booth Bennett, were overheard at a Vietnamese restaurant in Virginia Beach allegedly planning to go to Nevada and attack ICE agents as revenge for what they claimed was a “kidnapping,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Wednesday.[s]” situation of civilians during recent immigration enforcement operations.
“It is chilling that a human being, let alone a child educator, conspired to ambush and kill ICE law enforcement officers and offered details such as purchasing a high-caliber rifle that would penetrate law enforcement officers’ bulletproof vests,” McLaughlin said days ago, after Fox News Digital reported the adult siblings’ arrests.
“Thanks to Homeland Security Investigations and our partners, these men are behind bars.”
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Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, left; ICE agents, right (DHS; ICE)
John Bennett has been a faculty member at the school in inner Virginia Beach since 2009. The school told local media that he is currently on leave.
McLaughlin said DHS was working with law enforcement at all levels after an off-duty Norfolk police officer overheard men discussing plans to “kill police officers and ICE agents” at a Vietnamese restaurant in Virginia Beach on Nov. 17. Mark Bennett allegedly planned to meet like-minded people in Las Vegas, where he would purchase firearms with explosive bullets.
Two days later, Mark Bennett was arrested at Norfolk International Airport on his way to Charlotte-Douglas International Airport for a flight to Las Vegas. John Bennett was also arrested that day.
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McLaughlin said the case is indicative of a more than 1,150% increase in attacks against ICE agents and an 8,000-fold increase in death threats as they go about their daily jobs defending the homeland.
“They risk their lives every day to take out the worst of the worst, including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, terrorists and gang members. From bounties on their heads for their murders, to threats against their families, to stalking and exposing personal information online.”, McLaughlin said our officers are facing unprecedented levels of violence and threats against themselves and their families.
Mark Bennett’s lawyer, Happy O’Brien, disputed the version of events and reportedly said his client had instead flown to Nevada with his child for an F1 (Formula 1) motorsport event. Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.
O’Brien reportedly likened the restaurant conversation to something from the NBC sitcom “Seinfeld” — where Jerry Seinfeld’s and Jason Alexander’s characters would often engage in varying degrees of existential conversations over coffee at “Monk’s.”
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Both Bennetts were charged with conspiracy to cause malicious wounding.
Fox News Digital’s Adam Sabes contributed to this report.
