Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced on Wednesday that his office reached an agreement with Christopher Brown, 23, to plead guilty “for possessing a firearm as part of a planned terror attack on the New York Jewish community in 2022”, JNS reported.
Brown pleaded guilty in New York State Supreme Court to a count of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree as a crime of terrorism, Bragg’s office said, adding that Brown is slated to be sentenced on November 13 “to a promised sentence of 10 years in state prison, followed by five years post-release supervision.”
“Christopher Brown has been held accountable for his plan to commit a violent, antisemitic terrorist attack,” Bragg stated. “Thankfully, we were able to intervene and prevent him from following through.”
“I want Manhattan’s Jewish community to know that we are remaining extremely vigilant against threats of violence during this time of rising antisemitism, and our terrorism and hate-crimes units are continuing to conduct proactive investigations to keep everyone safe,” he added.
Brown was arrested in November of 2022, along with a second person. Police at the time said that Brown made a series of increasingly concerning statements about attacking a synagogue in New York City, but did not name a specific synagogue.
Brown admitted in the plea agreement that he wrote antisemitic posts on social media, including “God wants me to shoot up a synagogue and die” and “gonna ask a priest if I should become a husband or shoot up a synagogue and die,” before being arrested.
He also “used social media to express support for Nazi ideology and accelerationism, a form of racially and ethnically motivated extremism,” Bragg’s office said, according to JNS.
When officers arrested Brown on Nov. 18, 2022, at Penn Station in New York City, he had a knife, a swastika armband and a ski mask in his backpack. He had purchased a loaded gun in Pennsylvania for $650, the DA’s office said.