Manhunt underway for gun theft suspect who was ‘highly agitated by national politics,’ police say

Washington Post – by Lindsey Bever

Federal and local law enforcement in Wisconsin are searching for a 32-year-old man they say stole numerous guns with a possible plan to target area schools and public officials.

Authorities said Friday that more than 150 local, state and federal agents have been working over the past several days to locate Joseph Jakubowski, who is suspected of stealing about 16 high-end firearms Tuesday evening from a gun shop in Janesville, a town not far from Wisconsin’s southern border.  

“I can tell you that we don’t know where Mr. Jakubowski is,” Janesville Police Chief David Moore said. “He could be around Janesville. He could be around Rock County. He may not even be in Wisconsin.”

Rock County Sheriff Robert Spoden said during a Friday news conference that investigators determined Jakubowski, who has been “highly agitated by national politics,” penned a 161-page anti-government manifesto, which was sent to President Trump at the White House. The document has been evaluated by the FBI “to better understand his mind-set,” he said.

“It’s really a long, laundry list of injustices that he believes the government and society and the upper class have put forward on the rest of the citizens,” Spoden told reporters about the manifesto. “So there’s really nothing specific where he’s saying, ‘I was wronged in this way’ or ‘I was wronged in that way.’ It’s just an overview that he feels that the government, and law enforcement in particular, are acting as terrorists and are enslaving the people and creating this environment that he finds unacceptable.”

Investigators are still trying to determine when Jakubowski wrote it.

“Whether it’s the president or whether it’s local officials or whether it’s law enforcement, he basically has a dislike for anyone that has authority or governmental power,” Spoden added.

When asked whether authorities considered Jakubowski a terrorist, FBI special agent in charge Justin Tolomeo, told reporters only, “We have interest in him in regard to his ideology.”

Rock County sheriff’s deputies responded about 8:40 p.m. Tuesday to a burglary at Armageddon Gun Shop in Janesville, where surveillance footage showed a man break the front door glass, police said in a statement.

About 30 minutes later, a vehicle fire was reported near the scene. Authorities said the car was registered to Jakubowski and that the burglary and arson incidents appeared to be connected.

Jakubowski was missing.

“Mr. Jakubowski is considered a suspect in both incidents and is currently wanted by the Rock County Sheriff’s Office for questioning,” the Rock County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Police are offering up to a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

Spoden, the Rock County sheriff, said Friday that an associate of Jakubowski told investigators that Jakubowski had been upset over a variety of political issues. Police also learned that he had discussed a plan to steal weapons and use them to carry out an attack against public officials or an unspecified school. As a result, Spoden said, “law enforcement passed this information on to local schools so that they could take the appropriate cautionary measures.”

The Rock County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Thursday that it had assigned deputies to local schools — “not as a result of a specific threat but simply to provide a sense of security for students and parents.”

Fox6Now reported that on Thursday, several schools in the Janesville area initiated “soft lockdowns.” On Friday, public schools in Janesville and Milton as well as the University of Wisconsin at Rock County and Blackhawk Technical College were closed, according to the Associated Press.

At the news conference Friday, authorities said that they had tracked down more than 65 leads and searched a dozen different locations to find Jakubowski, whom they described as armed and “highly dangerous.”

Police also said they had learned that he acquired a bulletproof vest and helmet.

Moore, the police chief, said Jakubowski has had run-ins with local authorities, including one incident in which he tried to disarm an officer.

But, he said, police had not seen his “anti-government or terrorist-type” behavior.

“That is a new element for all of us,” Moore said. “Most of his activities have been anger-driven either toward the officers or toward other individuals, but not the antigovernment rhetoric, and that is a new piece to this investigation.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/04/07/manhunt-underway-for-gun-theft-suspect-who-was-highly-agitated-by-national-politics-police-say/?utm_term=.1b52c26dc050