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Maryland Police Arrest 'A Joker' They Say Threatened To 'Blow Everybody Up'

A photo released by Prince George's County (Md.) police of the weapons seized.
Prince George's Police Department
A photo released by Prince George's County (Md.) police of the weapons seized.

Police in Prince George's County, Md., "have arrested a man who [they say] referred to himself as 'a joker' and threatened to shoot people at his former workplace," The Washington Post's The Crime Scene blog writes.

He is identified in the warrant to search his home as Neil Prescott of Crofton, Md. He's reported to be 28-years-old. An inventory included with the warrant issued to search his home says police collected 15 firearms, including an assault rifle, shotguns and handguns, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. A photo police released of what was seized shows about 10 more weapons.

According to that warrant, Prescott called himself "a joker" during a threatening phone call Monday to his former employer, a Pitney Bowes office. So, police wrote in that warrant, "it is clear that the comments made by Prescott reference a recent mass murder which occurred in Colorado."

He also allegedly told a supervisor at the company, from which police say Prescott had been fired, that "I'm gonna load my guns and blow everybody up."

James Holmes, the man being held in last week's Colorado attack that left 12 people dead and another 58 wounded, allegedly called himself "the Joker." That shooting rampage happened during a midnight premiere of the new Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.