LINCOLN PARK, Mich. – A convicted felon out of Lincoln Park faces federal charges after allegedly calling several government agencies and threatening to kill high-ranking officials.
Dennis Allen Downey Jr. was charged with making threats.
According to the complaint, Downey called a U.S. government official in Washington, D.C., on March 5 and asked why Native American citizens had their 2nd Amendment rights taken away and why he cannot possess a gun after paying his dues for past crimes. Downey was convicted of a felony drug charge in 2001 and cannot possess a firearm.
Downey allegedly told the official that he wouldn't need a gun because he “will still gun down members of the highest level of the United States government and kill them all.”
The conversation turned to the subject of “the genocide of the Cherokee people” before the caller hung up telling the official to check the caller ID and forward the number to the FBI.
Later that same day, the United States Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Michigan received a phone call to their general line from the same number. The caller told the receptionist that he was “done living under the tyranny of British colonialism” and that he would use his “2nd Amendment rights to take up arms and slaughter government officials.”
An agent with the U.S. Capitol Police was notified and an investigation showed the phone number belonged to a T-Mobile cellular telephone registered to Downey and calls were placed from that number to the government offices at those times, according to the federal complaint.
Call records showed Downey also contacted the FBI, the Department of Justice, Housing and Urban Development, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, the Capitol switchboard and the White House.
Authorities said the number was attached to an assault case from January, where Downey allegedly attacked a co-worker with a steel coffee cup and struck the victim’s six to eight times in the face.