A North Carolina man pleaded guilty in federal court on Tuesday to attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries.
Justin Nojan Sullivan of Morganton, N.C., was indicted earlier this year for communicating with an Islamic State member as he planned a domestic terrorist attack.
“Sullivan admitted in court today that he attempted to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries by planning mass casualty shooting attacks on behalf of ISIL against innocent people in North Carolina and Virginia,” U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose of the Western District of North Carolina said in a Justice Department press release issued Tuesday evening, using a common acronym for the Islamic State.
“Sullivan also admitted he had frequent and direct communications with Junaid Hussain, one of ISIL’s prominent members in Syria, who asked Sullivan to make a video of the deadly attack.”
The 20-year-old man began watching the jihadist group’s terrorist attacks starting in September 2014, prosecutors said. By June of the following year, Sullivan contacted Hussain about carrying out mass shootings in Virginia and North Carolina. The FBI was monitoring Sullivan’s contact with Hussain and sent in an undercover agent to befriend the suspect.
Sullivan did not enter a plea for the December 2014 killing of his 74-year-old neighbor, John Bailey Clark, and he still faces capital murder charges for that crime. The FBI says Sullivan shot and robbed Clark to get money to help him buy an assault rifle he planned to use to commit his planned terrorist attacks. He said he had hoped to kill 1,000 people.
Sullivan also offered an undercover FBI agent money to kill his parents because he believed they would have tried to stop his plans.
The one terrorism charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. The plea agreement states both parties have agreed that life is appropriate, according to the Justice Department.
