16 | JUNE 29 • 2023 

O

n Friday, June 16, the 
Federal Bureau of 
Investigation arrested 
a 19-year-old Upper Peninsula 
man with East Lansing ties 
and charged him with trans-
mitting a communication 
containing a threat to injure 
another. He is charged with 
making plans to kill people 
at Congregation Shaarey 
Zedek in East Lansing on 
the chosen date of March 15, 
2024, according to the U.S. 
Attorney’s Office. 
Federal officials arrested 
Seann Patrick Pietila, most 
recently of Pickford, and 
searched his residence. There, 
they found ammunition, mag-
azines, a shotgun, a rifle, a pis-
tol, knives and other firearm 
accessories, along with a Nazi 
flag, gas masks and military 
manuals.
In a note specifying the date 
of the planned attack on the 
synagogue, Pietila also wrote: 
“Me and Limey, Equipment: 
hand-made pipe bombs, 
molotovs, Two Stag-15s, 12 
gauge shotgun and two back 
up Glock 18s AND a Akm full 
auto conversion.” 
In a June 16 news release, 
U.S. Attorney for the Western 
District of Michigan Mark 
Totten stated: “
Antisemitic 
threats and violence against 
our Jewish communities — or 

any other group for that mat-
ter — will not be tolerated 
in the Western District of 
Michigan. Today and every 
day we take all credible threats 
seriously. I’m incredibly grate-
ful to the FBI for their swift 
action to identify and arrest 
Pietila.”
According to Totten, FBI 

agent Ryan Roskey on June 
16 filed a 44-page affidavit 
complaint with the Western 
Michigan District Court 
against the man. 
As outlined in the com-
plaint, the man is alleged 
to have communicated with 
others on Instagram and 
evinced a neo-Nazi ideology, 

antisemitism, glorification 
of past mass shooters, and a 
desire and intent to mimic 
past mass shooters or mass 
casualty events, including 
the mass shooter that mur-
dered Muslims at prayer in 
New Zealand in March of 
2019. 
In the affidavit, Roskey 
stated he believes that Pietila 
is in violation of section 875 
of Title 18 of the United 
States Code, which prohibits 
the transmission in interstate 
or foreign commerce, any 
communication containing 
any threat to kidnap any per-
son or any threat to injure 
the person of another.
The affidavit said that 
around June 13, the FBI 
received a 210-page report 
from Meta, which operates 
Facebook, Instagram and 
other social media platforms, 
which contained threatening 
communications exchanged 
via online social media 
messaging between some-
one using the username of 
“finnishv64” and other users, 
describing his plans to “com-
mit a mass casualty incident.” 
It was discovered that Pietila 
was finnishv64. 
The affidavit included 
details of these chilling 
online conversations. The 
man expressed the pain of 

OUR COMMUNITY

Congregation Shaarey Zedek in East Lansing

FBI arrests Michigan man who threatened mass shooting 
at East Lansing’s Congregation Shaarey Zedek.

Terror Threat 
Thwarted

STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

LEFT TO RIGHT: Israeli Knesset member Dan Illouz, Rabbi Amy 
Bigman, U.S. Attorney Mark Totten

SHARON HASSON

