Attacker on Tacoma ICE Detention Center identified as “anarchist and antifascist”
Willem Van Spronsen attacked the center with incendiary devices before being shot dead. In an earlier 2018 protest outside the facility, Van Spronsen “was accused of lunging at a police officer’s neck to help free a 17-year-old protester who was being detained”
Willem Van Spronsen, 69, of Vashon Island, Washington, attacked an ICE Detention Center in Tacoma earlier today with incendiary devices and while armed with a rifle. He was killed in a shootout with police.
The NY Times reported:
The police fatally shot a man who was attacking an immigration detention center in Tacoma, Wash., on Saturday morning, the authorities said.
The man, who was armed with a rifle, was throwing unspecified “incendiary devices” at the Northwest Detention Center, according to a police statement. The man, identified by officials on Saturday afternoon as Willem Van Spronsen, 69, of Vashon Island, Wash., continued throwing lit objects at buildings and cars, the statement said.
“One car was fully engulfed in flames,” said Officer Loretta Cool, a spokeswoman for the Tacoma Police Department. “He was also trying to ignite a big propane tank but he was not successful.”
The Seattle Times reports that Van Spronsen was involved in previous protests and violence at the center, and was described by a friend as :
Deb Bartley, a friend of Van Spronsen’s for about 20 years, described him as an anarchist and antifascist, and believes his attack on the detention center intending to provoke a fatal conflict.
“He was ready to end it,” Bartley said. “I think this was a suicide. But then he was able to kind of do it in a way that spoke to his political beliefs … I know he went down there knowing he was going to die.”
She and other friends of Van Spronsen got letters in the mail “just saying goodbye.” He also wrote what she referred to as a manifesto, which she declined to discuss in detail but predicted would be taken by authorities….
Maru Mora-Villalpando, an activist with the group La Resistancia, which has frequently protested the conditions at the detention center and broader immigration policy, said she did not know Van Spronsen himself. Nor was La Resistencia involved with the June 2018 protest at which he was arrested, she said.
The 2018 protest involved about 160 people outside the detention center. About 40 people blocked a police car that had arrived, prompting the officer to call in backup; about 25 officers responded.
In court documents, Van Spronsen was accused of lunging at a police officer’s neck to help free a 17-year-old protester who was being detained. Van Spronsen refused to comply with officers’ orders, and as he was led through a crowd of protesters, police said he tried to pass the baton to another protester. Van Spronsen was punched in the face at least once during the altercation. Nine other people were arrested as well.
He ultimately pleaded guilty in Pierce County Superior Court to one count of obstructing an officer, a gross misdemeanor, and received a one-year deferred sentence in October, according to court documents, which labeled him indigent. He had no previous criminal history, according to court records.
MORE TO FOLLOW
He’s being treated as a hero in Antifa and anti-ICE circles.
UPDATE
Shaun King called for the “concentration camps” to be liberated “by any means necessary” — are we now going to have a national conversation about how leftist rhetoric contributed to violence?
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Comments
Another good Antifa.
At least he is dead. I have felt for some time that Antifa needs to see some of their people in body bags, that might temper their attitude, and if it doesn’t, they can become further examples.
“pour encourager les autres”
If you check the twitter account of one of these people who make positive reply about this guy you can get a whole bunch of names.
Will Antifa turn this man into the 21st centure Hörst Wessel? A rallying point?
Justice Served..
let’s see–you enter a federal facility, armed with incendiary devices and a rifle, begin hurling said devices toward staff/occupants and you are shot dead as a result
nothing to see here–move along
It’s the democrats and media spooling these people up. They have blood on their hands.
Was he on Psychotropic Medication?
Yes… Yes he was. He’d just finished watching CNN.
We are in for an interesting summer. Even more interesting when the first of the primaries and caucuseses start taking place.
Summer of 2020? Let’s just say this ol’ bear is sticking close to his den.
Interesting how the anti-gun fascists are suddenly quiet about the need to “keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals blah blah blah”.
I found a YouTube video of the murderous suspect performing solo back in 2012 at some kind of music festival where he warbles some kind of protest song. The lyrics are just what a sane person with the capacity for reason and an abiding love for truth and affection for true justice would expect from someone like him…. the antithesis of all that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaOcS6Izy2o
Wow…..he is indeed a martyr to them (rest in power, LOL!)
The crazy runs deep in these loons, and they are itching for a fight!
“Willem Van Spronsen, 69, of Vashon Island”
69?
Drug use would explain it since acquiring a sense of balance, along with a certain resignation about life in general, accompanies aging.
He did not use drugs or alcohol
Probably a pedophile too.
Not everyone who is bent on violence, on the left, or both, are “on drugs”.
How is calling this proportional and an act of heroism not a big red flag to anyone who doesn’t understand what antifa is?
Pay attention, nonchalant onlookers…it’s time to raise those eyebrows.
rdmdawg, my sentimate exactly.
Somehow it will be spun to be a fallout of the Trump presidency.
Which will ruin the reputation of the spinners too. win win
What that the left disapproves of ISN’T Trump’s fault?
I’m reminded of the joke about a woman walking out of a beauty salon, only to have a cloudburst soak her fresh ‘do. She raises her fist, shakes it at the sky, and shouts, “That damn’ Nixon!”
Glad to see him gone, may he rest in hell.
Hell is turning out to be the final train stop for a while bunch of Progressive heros. That’s one intersectionality they can have…they earned it..
I guess the other antifa haven’t done the math yet to realize that the threshold for getting shot has just been significantly lowered. Of course, I doubt math is an important part of their toolbox.
Math is part of the white supremacist patriarchy blargle blargle blah blah. I think it’s also heteronormative, and there may be a way to squeeze in “intersectionality”, but I haven’t figured out how yet.
Antifa routinely engage in terror that can get them lawfully shot in defense of self or another. In WA a citizen is, by statute, given more latitude to use lethal force than is law enforcement, but in reality law enforcement is given leniency. In CA there have been a very few antifa stabbed in self defense with no consequence to the defender, but this is the first shooting and killing. It’s about time.
Likely why most of the Antifa violence we see reported is centered in Portland, OR. The politicians of Portland do not want Antifa “bothered” by local law enforcement and I suspect they would expect law enforcement to protect Antifa from legally licensed and armed citizens.
Major and Beretta,
He wanted to die and to these useful idiots for the left he is a hero. He wrote a manifesto and wrote “goodbye letters”.
Hopefully, the middle of the country sees these idiots as useless and votes the other way.
You could also say he went sauer on sig. ????
I love my Sig (an STX). Open carried it to Walmart to do my shopping this morning. The same Walmart at which two armed citizens stopped a shooter/carjacker about a year ago.
You could also say he went sauer on sig. ????
This should spur a lot of investigative journalism: to what organizations did he belong? How many others are there like him? Instead, CNN will end this story as quickly as they can.
The good news is that he’s dead.
The only reason Antifa hasn’t killed anyone yet is a combination of blind luck and shocking incompetence.
Anarchists are terrorists, and they need to die.
So do traitors. Just like the Rosenbergs.
Traitors, yes!
Quite a few of the political stripe come to mind, particularly one in very high office not born in the United States
The bigger question is what is going on with the Left and do they really think America is going to support them? Additionally, this appears t be a worldwide event that begs the question of what is what the devil is going on?
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In this article we see Antifa supporting attacks on an ICE and immigration detention facility. Likewise, they violently attack anyone who is not far Left even though they really haven’t articulated what they want other than to destroy conservatives.
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Then you have the utterly insane policy being pushed to dismantle our border and to allow any and all who enter to stay. Who could possible support the abolition of borders which would result in the erasing of our country and national identity? In other countries, such as England or Sweden, crime is rising to extreme levels and, even though this crime is directly related to the huge immigration rates of people from North Africa and the Middle East, the mention of recent immigrants being involved in this crime wave will get you jailed for racist thinking and the government won’t even allow the police to keep records on who is doing what illegally.
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On top of this we are watching rampant support for all but eliminating our rules for voting and identifying who is voting in America. The idea that anyone can vote without being a registered voter until the day of voting, no voter ID laws, and essentially the elimination of voter fraud laws, all but guarantees fraud at such levels that the entire voting system will become no longer valid for anything and yet the Left is again supporting this.
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Add to this mess the Left’s/Democrat’s demand for increasingly restrictive gun laws that are clearly headed for confiscation either physically or by legal limitations making the owning/using of them all but untenable, the extreme policies demanded by the LGBT community including where children are being exposed to the most bizarre “sex education” in even grade school, the complete demonization of white males as the cause for everything bad in this country, the snowflake movement taking over our campuses, the stance on abortion on demand at any point in a pregnancy for any reason, and so many more issues.
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It seems as though the Left/Democrats have become completely unhinged with ideas and absolute stands that just a few years ago would have been thought to extreme for anyone to support. Today these ideas are being pushed as though they are mainstream and supported by most everyone with the MSM as the main culprit of this push. It is as though a mass insanity has descended upon our country and others and it all is coming from the Democrats/Left. What is gong on in the world and in our country and elsewhere to cause this mass insanity?
The answer I offer is untenable to many people, but my thoughts are that there is a winnowing taking place – a separation, a division. I think that it’s possible that we are not wrestling against “flesh & blood” but against “Powers & Principalities” in high places, a spiritual warfare as it were. There is a battle happening and we are merely willing tools in that battle.
Does this loser twerp get Viagra for his virgins? Nah, few, if any virgins in hell.
Ridiculous. If you want to commit suicide, do so without harming others, or, attempting to harm others.
I’d be utterly embarrassed to leave such a disgraceful legacy as this loser did, being killed while attempting to harm law enforcement officers and to cause property damage. This was an act of pure selfishness, hate and self-aggrandizement.
The world is better off without people such as this fool, in it.
I have a slightly different read. I think many of these antifa idiots are so used to being given a license to do almost anything (particularly in the NW) that this guy assumed that he would not be challenged and the worst he would get was a ticket for littering. Remember that antifa people blockaded and trashed the ICE building in Portland for over a week and got a slap in the wrist.
In the Milgram experiment 65% of subjects would turn the shock control to lethal to get their way and 75% to the point of intentional suffering. The Left is on a positive feedback loop..There is no buffer or braking mechanism to their push to utopia. Part lemming ..Part Tulip bulb fiasco back in Holland. Savage is right about progressivism being a mental disorder. Their numbers only begin to grow when a culture can support them when in earlier times their decisions would eliminate them from the gene pool. So we repeat the decay of a culture/civilization….. The story of the ant and grasshopper is unlearned again.
“By any means necessary.” is a relativistic Machiavellian ethic that has only one standard: The result. As Milgram demonstrated, the lack of an internal moral compass supported by an external moral standard enables one to rationalize any evil act. The leftist leaders know that the praise showered on this POS will encourage other sociopath losers to attempt to kill and harm because they are simply doing what they are told to do to become a hero.
Communism/totalitarianism is siren song to sociopaths who are so pleased with themselves when they force that evil upon other people by any means necessary.
WSJ is reporting that since our Blabber Mouth in Chief announced to the world the date of pending ICE raids the illegals are prepared and thus NYC ICE was rebuffed and there have been zero deportations in the Big Apple!
Or is there a political point of having the city/state Dems respond with anti-ICE actions? This was to round up criminals…those now … Again…openly protected by Dems.
WSJ
Bird cage liner.
The totalitarian-anarchist, the left-right nexus… not viable. h/t planned parenthood
Democrat voter?
Maybe a Green Party, or Peace & Freedom. This sort of thing is more their speed.
Well, about the only good thing I can say about this is that the only person who died was the attacker himself. It’s a dangerous and scary escalation and we can only hope other, similarly deranged individuals don’t quickly follow suit. And yes DERANGED! Sane people don’t do this, sane people peacefully protest, seek to change laws and policy if something is truly so distasteful to them. They don’t randomly lash out at that which so upsets them or perhaps those who are supposed to carry out said laws. Let us hope that this attack does not embolden other members of Antifa especially as there are reports that their members are arming up. If Antifa members actually start getting into shoot outs with the police then we may see National Guard quickly mobilized to help restore order. I pray things don’t actually get to that point!
I was thinking it means one less democratic voter,
But these events might not keep his vote from being counted.
It figures that Van Spronsen is from Vashon, a place where progressives and communists go because they feel that Seattle is too conservative for them.
One ahole down and lots to go.
They wind themselves up with inflammatory rhetoric. Somehow, somewhere there ought to be negative social and economic—if not legal—consequences for those who broadcast this sort of extravagant rhetoric that keeps susceptible people in a state of perpetual rage. Since we no longer institutionalize potentially harmful mental cases, and they are instead left to wander in among the unsuspecting public, much of the hate-filled expression seen and heard today would be tantamount to winding up the inmates in a mental hospital sixty years ago. Would those circumstances have been sufficient to cross the line of ‘clear and present danger’? I suspect so, and perhaps it would be worth exploring. I am not a believer in censorship, but the rhetoric of extremists today knows no bounds—and often appears to be deliberately aimed at inspiring violent action.
Best to deal with it by allowing all speech and taking care of the violent nuts just like this one.