Blog Briefing Room

Conspiracy theorists arrested, accused of harassing pastor at site of Texas shooting

Texas police on Monday arrested two conspiracy theorists for harassing the pastor of a church where 26 people were killed last year.

The Wilson County Sheriff’s Office arrested Robert Ussery, 54, and Jodi Mann, 56, for confronting and harassing pastor Frank Pomeroy at Sutherland Springs Baptist Church after a church congregant called the police, according to the San Antonio Express-News

Ussery and Mann are conspiracy theorists who claim the shooting at the church did not happen and was actually a hoax perpetrated by the Department of Homeland Security.

The pastor, whose 14-year-old daughter was killed in the November shooting, said Ussery “continually yelled and screamed and hollered and told me he was gonna hang me from a tree.”

{mosads}

Pomeroy said the two have repeatedly harassed the church community. 

The conspiracy theorists, who run a website full of homemade videos attempting to prove the shooting was a government-staged hoax, approached and began screaming at Pomeroy as he pulled up to the church in his car. The pastor waited until the police arrived. 

“We’ve already had to deal with one person that lived in an alternate reality,” Pomeroy said of the 26-year-old shooter who killed himself after carrying out the massacre in November. 

Ussery and Mann have denied multiple mass shootings in recent years, including the Feb. 14 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., as a “staged drill.” The two are now in custody. 

The mass shooting in the rural town was the worst in Texas history.