(The Center Square) – The FBI and several police departments foiled another New Year’s Eve terror plot, this time in North Carolina, officials announced on Friday.
The FBI apprehended 18-year-old Christian Sturdivant on New Year’s Eve, the day for which he had planned his attack, Russ Ferguson, U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, said. Inspired by ISIS, Sturdivant had planned attacks on a local grocery store and fast food restaurant in the town of Mint Hill, North Carolina, where he lived, Ferguson said.
Law enforcement worked “around the clock” through the holidays to ensure the safety of the public, surveilling Sturdivant and obtaining search and arrest warrants, Ferguson said.
Law enforcement officers were able to follow Sturdivant’s interest in ISIS online, through TikTok videos and internet searches, and an inadvertent confession of his plans to an undercover New York police officer he thought was a member of ISIS, authorities said.
“He pledged his allegiance to ISIS… and disclosed his plans to ‘Do jihad soon,” Ferguson said at a news conference Friday.
He then encountered another undercover agent, this time with the FBI, whom he also believed to be a supporter of ISIS, Ferguson said. It was with this agent that he disclosed his specific plans to attack a grocery store and fast food restaurant on New Year’s Eve, he said.
Ferguson said that Sturdivant had been planning attacks for a long time. Sturdivant remains in law enforcement custody and has been charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He is the subject of an ongoing investigation.
In December, the FBI thwarted a New Year’s Eve bomb plot in Los Angeles by alleged members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front, which Attorney General Pam Bondi described as a “far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-government, and anti-capitalist group.”
