FBI Thwarts Plan for Local Man’s Mass Shooting

A tip to FBI Special Agent Susana Haberman helped the Bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force nab a 50-year-old Austin resident who was "planning to conduct a mass shooting," according to a federal criminal complaint signed April 13 by U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Lane. Steven Thomas Boehle was arrested for providing false statements in connection with attempted acquisition of a firearm, and unlawful possession of a firearm by a prohibited person.

Haberman received the tip on April 10 from a source who told her that Boehle "exhibits sovereign citizen extremism ideology" and had recently been denied in an attempt to purchase a firearm. Background checks revealed that the denial stems from Boehle's 1993 conviction in New Haven, Conn., of a misdemeanor for domestic violence. The conviction put him in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and made the acquisition of any firearms illegal. A question on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Form 4473 specifically asks: "Have you ever been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence?"

That didn't stop Boehle from trying, however. In 2002, he lied and answered "no" to the above question during an attempted purchase at Just Guns on South Congress. (It actually took NICS a few months to notice Boehle's denial. He received the gun, but was forced to bring it back.) In 2015, he tried unsuccessfully to buy two guns – a Heritage Rough Rider revolver and a Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol – from the Academy Sports & Outdoors in Sunset Valley. (That time he was promptly flagged by NICS.) And in December 2016, he once again lied on an ATF form but got denied when he tried to buy a .40 caliber rifle from Central Texas Gun Works on Ben White.

Yet Boehle had managed to acquire a few guns, something Haberman learned shortly after Austin Police executed a search warrant last Wednesday for a narcotics investigation at 615 W. St. Johns. Police recovered three firearms, all manufactured out of state, and more than 1,100 rounds of ammunition from an apartment closet. A woman who lived there told Bureau investigators that Boehle was living with her but had only agreed to keep his clothes and other possessions in the closet – not guns or ammo. The woman became "visibly upset," the complaint noted, when she learned what Boehle had been keeping in her closet.

Boehle has been assigned counsel through the Office of the Federal Public Defender, whose office did not respond to request for comment.