Authorities have arrested a St. Helens man, accusing him of plotting to kill ICE agents and cut off their heads.
Rayden Tanner Coleman, 18, faces charges of second-degree assault and unlawful possession and manufacture of a destructive device after he allegedly told acquaintances about his violent plans, bought an assault rifle and started making Molotov cocktails, court records show.
People who know Coleman told police he was “always a good person,” but that in the last month he’d become increasingly upset about the actions of ICE agents during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
In January, federal agents shot and killed two people in separate incidents in Minneapolis, and they shot and injured two people in Portland. This prompted Coleman to write a manifesto and launch plans to form a separatist state of “Cascadia,” prosecutors allege.
Coleman also allegedly began to assemble an arsenal, including Molotov cocktails and an assault rife, and to try to recruit people to join him.
Two of the people he attempted to recruit went to the police because they were concerned about what he was saying, prosecutors say. One person allegedly told police that “Rayden was not himself” and that he viewed his separatist group as a “jumping off point for a civil war.”
Coleman told people he intended to kill ICE agents, cut off their heads and take the heads to the Warm Springs reservation to prove his seriousness to would-be recruits there, prosecutors say in court documents.
On Feb. 4, police officers pulled Coleman over as he was driving in St. Helens and searched the car’s trunk, where they found glass bottles partially filled with sand, prosecutors allege. Court records show that Coleman’s acquaintances had earlier told police that the bottles were for making Molotov cocktails.
Police arrested Coleman after the traffic stop, and he then told officers he had planned to attack ICE agents but that the gun he’d bought wasn’t scheduled to arrive until the following day, according to court records.
Prosecutors allege that Coleman also told officers that he did make comments about beheading federal agents but that he was angry at the time and didn’t plan to follow through on that threat.
Court records show that Coleman has no convictions in Oregon.
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