Boss finds ‘hit list’ with plans to kill coworkers on employee’s desk, Utah cops say

A 56-year-old man faces a threat of terrorism charge after his boss found a detailed “hit list” for a workplace shooting on his desk, Utah sheriff’s officials say.

Juab County sheriff’s deputies responded to a feed plant at 10:52 a.m. Thursday, March 24, after a manager found the list, a probable cause affidavit posted by The Daily Beast said.

Found on the desk of an employee who had called in sick that day, the plan included a list of firearms and how much ammunition to bring, the affidavit said.

It detailed how many coworkers he intended to kill at each location as he moved through the plant for a total of 14 deaths, according to the affidavit.

Notes at the bottom included reminders to take out landline phones, build a cell phone jammer and snipe at responding police from a roof, the affidavit said.

The manager told deputies the employee, who lives in Nephi, had not been in trouble, but coworkers said he had been acting strangely and asked to work alone, according to the affidavit. The supervisor also said that he’s maintenance worker and “has access to everything.”

Sheriff’s officials and Nephi police arrested the employee as he drove away from his home, deputies wrote.

The employee told investigators he wrote the “stupid note” because he had been “thinking about it and what would happen if they had a mass shooting because he had just got done reading an article about a mass shooting,” the affidavit reported.

He said he used his military experience to draft the plan, but conceded it was not really effective as a plan to counter a hypothetical attack, deputies wrote. He said he did not plan to carry it out.

The worker confirmed that he owned the firearms mentioned in the note, but said his daughter had confiscated them because his family was worried about him, the affidavit said.

Deputies placed him under arrest because they believed he had “the knowledge and means to carry out the attack,” the affidavit said.

Nephi is a community of 6,000 people, 40 miles south of Provo.

This story was originally published March 27, 2022 at 3:14 PM with the headline "Boss finds ‘hit list’ with plans to kill coworkers on employee’s desk, Utah cops say."