18-Year-Old Arrested in Plot to Attack Houston Synagogue

Authorities say an 18-year-old in North Carolina was planning an attack on a Jewish synagogue in Texas. Angelina Han Hicks was arrested yesterday and is being held on $10 million bond. She allegedly was planning the attack online with a teen in Texas who was also arrested.

An 18-year-old Lexington, North Carolina, woman and a 16-year-old in Texas have been charged after a fast-moving multistate FBI investigation into an alleged plot to attack a Jewish institution in Houston, according to court documents and statements from the FBI and Davidson County Sheriff’s Office.

Angelina Han Hicks was arrested on Wednesday by detectives with the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigation Division. She faces two counts of felony conspiracy. A juvenile was separately charged in Harris County, Texas, according to the FBI.

Investigators allege Hicks and her co-conspirators were planning a mass-casualty event at Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Houston. Court documents say the group intended to “kill as many Jews as possible” by driving through the congregation.

The whole thing came together very quickly this week.

The FBI Charlotte Joint Terrorism Task Force launched the investigation Tuesday evening after a tip came in to a North Carolina law enforcement agency. FBI special agents and Davidson County Sheriff’s Office detectives went to Hicks’ home in Lexington, where investigators say they found evidence of the alleged plot.

What no one seems to be discussing yet is the evidence that led to the arrest. Was there a manifesto or a written plot found in the search of Hicks’ home? Authorities clearly have something they think is serious but none of the local stories about this seem to know what it is yet.

Hicks allegedly conspired with two other people, only one of whom has been arrested.

According to investigators, she is accused of conspiring with two men — identified only as “Teegan” and “Angel” — to attack members of Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Houston.

It’s not uncommon in cases like this for the parents of the accused to claim their son or daughter is an innocent “good kid” who did nothing wrong. And that’s the case here. Local news spoke to Dannie Hicks’ the suspect’s father by phone and he suggested that there was no way she could harm anyone in Texas. He said his daughter just liked to play fantasy video games online and barely ever left the house.

“It’s ludicrous. It’s a fantasy game,” he said. “And that’s the way she looked at it — as a fantasy game online.”

Dannie Hicks questioned whether his daughter had the means to carry out any attack, noting she does not drive, does not own a car and has never fired a gun.

“It’s nuts what (investigators) done to her,” he said. “They’ve ruined her whole life and ours over this.”

What fantasy video game involves driving a car into a synagogue? The father mentioned Roblox but didn’t specifically say she was playing such a game. You can listen to the whole phone interview with the parents below. The father does sound genuinely shocked by the allegations, saying he has slept 6 hours over three days. He claims not to know much about what his daughter is into online beyond video games but says she’s never been in any trouble.

The planned attack was allegedly not set too take place for another two years, but authorities suggested the danger was imminent.

While Hicks’ warrants point to a potential attack two years from now, Alan Martin — a senior assistant district attorney covering Davidson County — said in an interview that there had been “some concern that there could be an imminent event” targeting the Houston synagogue. A potential motive for the planned violence wasn’t immediately disclosed in North Carolina court documents. The investigation is continuing.

So is this a case of online radicalization? We’ve certainly seen that before but it usually involves ISIS or some other Islamic extremist group encouraging people to commit attacks, including attacks using vehicles. So far, there’s no hint in the stories I’ve read to suggest any connection to Islam or overseas entities. And it goes without saying that 18-year-old girls aren’t the usual suspects in those sort of cases.

It could also be a copycat case of the incident last month:

The FBI said Ayman Ghazali sought to inflict as much damage as he could on Jewish people when he drove his pickup truck March 12 into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan.

But that attack was a failure. No one was harmed beyond one security guard who survived. Ghazali appears to have killed himself after setting fire to his truck. 

I’d like to read the charging documents but none of the stories I’ve read linked to them. I guess the worst case scenario here is that this woman and the two other teens involved came to this on their own, i.e. it’s some kind of anti-Semitic domestic terrorism plot. Here’s the interview with the father.