Photo Credit: Everything Georgia
An Arizona man was indicted today for allegedly plotting the mass shooting of a Bad Bunny concert in Atlanta, Georgia. The plot was foiled when the man sold weapons to an undercover federal agent who he believed would help him carry out the plan.
The man hoped the mass shooting incident targeting minorities at the State Farm Arena would “incite a race war” ahead of the U.S. Presidential election. Mark Adams Prieto was indicted by a grand jury in Arizona on charges of firearms trafficking, transferring a firearm for use in a hate crime, and possession of an unregistered firearm.
The indictment says 58-year-old Prieto from Prescott, Arizona recruited an undercover FBI agent and an informant at a gun show where Prieto was a vendor. Prieto told the undercover FBI agent that he was considering carrying out a mass killing of minorities, stating that a rap concert in Atlanta on May 14 seemed like the best target. Rapper Bad Bunny was performing in Atlanta on May 14-15 and those concerts were held without incident.
Plans for the mass shooting began as early as October 2023, with Prieto making plans over the course of several months at gun shows across Arizona. Prieto sold two rifles to be used in the planned shooting to an undercover FBI agent. The initial source who informed the FBI said they had spoken to Prieto various times over three years and chats grew from small talk and political conversation to comments about advocating for a mass shooting and targeting Blacks, Muslims, or Jewish people.
“The reason I say Atlanta. Why, why is Georgia such a fucked up state now?” Prieto told the informant. “When I was a kid that was one of the most conservative states in the country. Why is it not now? Because as crime got worse in L.A., St. Louis, and all these other cities—all the [n-words] moved out of those cities and moved to Atlanta. That’s why it isn’t so great anymore.”
Prieto planned to target a rap concert because of the high concentration of African American individuals who would be present. He also had plans to leave Confederate flags after the shooting and to shout “whities out here killing, what’s we gonna do” and “KKK all the way.”
Prieto was arrested in New Mexico on May 14 around the time of the Atlanta concert—while driving east from Arizona. Authorities confirmed they found seven firearms inside the vehicle at the time of his arrest. Prieto remains in federal custody due to a New Mexico judge’s orders, stating the “seriousness of danger to the community is extreme.”
