Instagram posts lead to Fairfax County man, arrested with gun and extra ammunition
Within the horrible list of American shootings, there is a subset of massacres in places of worship: First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., 26 slain; Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., nine dead.
On Sunday morning, as a man in sunglasses quietly slipped through the side door of a house of worship in Haymarket, Va., Park Valley Church was poised to join that dreadful list, police believe. But someone in Maryland had spotted troubling Instagram posts by the man in sunglasses, leading police in three counties to rapidly mobilize and track down and arrest the suspected would-be shooter as he stood in the vestibule during the Park Valley service with a loaded pistol, extra ammunition and two folding knives.
“I believe God had a hand on us,” the Rev. Barry White, the church’s senior pastor, said Tuesday. “These kinds of events don’t normally play out this way.”
When officers spoke to Rui Jiang, 35, he allegedly admitted he had written the threatening posts on Instagram, which included a photo of him holding a firearm target with bullet holes and captions. And according to court records, he had written: “Blood will be on your hands. The world will know my story. And what you did to me. And why I’m about to do what I do.”
As Jiang was taken to the Prince William County jail, police obtained a search warrant for his apartment in the Skyline Towers complex in the Baileys Crossroads section of Fairfax County on Sunday afternoon. There, they found “a very detailed one-page manifesto,” Fairfax Police Chief Kevin Davis said. It “systematically and logically identifies his grievance with the government, identifies his intent to harm and kill, and identifies his own desire to end his life. It was eerie.”
Davis said that Park Valley was minutes away from disaster and that police quickly “identified a person who really was going to become — and I believe this — America’s latest version of a mass killer. … This was a thwarted diabolical plot to kill churchgoers in Haymarket, Virginia, and local law enforcement stopped it.”
Jiang was charged with one felony count of making a threat by letter and one misdemeanor count of carrying a weapon into a religious meeting. He was being held Tuesday without bond. The Prince William public defender’s office, assigned to represent Jiang, declined to comment.
White, the pastor, said the church’s safety team was already monitoring Jiang, who was wearing sunglasses and black clothes.
White said he was preparing for the 10 a.m. service when he first heard there was a safety concern. But Jiang’s arrest happenedquietly, without disrupting the Park Valley gathering, and it wasn’t until after White finished the service that he learned of the arrest and the weapons allegedly brought into his church.
Prince William police Sgt. Jonathan Perok said the man entered the church through a side entrance that churchgoers were not using that day. Jiang may have seen that door during a visit earlier Sunday: Fairfax police believe Jiang went to the church between 3:20 and 6 that morning, took pictures of the building, then made “several concerning social media posts,” according to a timeline released late Monday.
Investigators suspect Jiang drove the roughly 36 miles back to Skyline Towers, and at 7:40 a.m. a resident of Anne Arundel County, Md., saw Jiang’s Instagram posts. The Anne Arundel police looked into Jiang, found out he lived in Fairfax County, and asked Fairfax police to check on him.
“Anne Arundel could’ve just reduced that to a report,” said Davis, “and given [the caller] a set of case numbers and gone about their Sunday, but they didn’t. They followed their intuition and their hunch that they better notify Fairfax County.”
Fairfax police went to Skyline Towers about 9:20 a.m., but Jiang wasn’t there. Based on the Instagram messages, Fairfax police determined that Jiang might be at Park Valley Church, just off Route 15.
Davis said Jiang posted photos of the church. “If he had not posted those pictures in the wee hours of Sunday morning,” Davis said in an interview, “I don’t know if we would have been in a position to arrest him.”
Fairfax police called Prince William police, who dispatched officers about 10 a.m. But an off-duty Prince William officer was already at the church working security, Davis said. Perok said the officer saw Jiang’s car in the parking lot and found the man standing inside the main vestibule.
Davis said Jiang was arrested without incident. Court records indicated he was carrying a Walther PPS pistol. Perok said that Jiang had a concealed-weapons permit and that his handgun had not been reported stolen. Perok said Jiang had already walked inside and around the church but was standing in a vestibule at the church’s main entrance when police approached him.
When police from Prince William and Fairfax visited Jiang’s apartment, the screed was “in a very visible place,” Davis said, “where he knew law enforcement likely was going to find it.” Davis said it was “something he had obviously been thinking about for some time. It was methodical. He laid his intentions out there.”
Davis said there were references related to “why he selected that church, but he also articulated that he didn’t know anyone at that church. … He knew he was going to take many lives yesterday, and he also said that [he didn’t] know any of them.” Davis said there was no indication that Jiang was connected to any groups or terrorist organizations.
Prince William Police Chief Peter Newsham said Tuesday that the church’s private security personnel helped point out Jiang to the officer. “‘See something, say something’ really works,” Newsham said. “I’m glad that our community was able to get us the information, and glad that our officers and colleagues were able to act as quickly as they did.”
Davis said the cooperation among the three law enforcement agencies, with each one taking the threat seriously, was crucial. “When law enforcement gets our hands on information that raises the hair on the back of our necks,” Davis said, “we have to act on it. Not only did Prince William County act on it and make a courageous apprehension in the vestibule of the church, but it all started in Anne Arundel County. All did the right thing, all within a couple of hours.”
Since the incident, White has met with people who were worried about their safety at church, he said.
“We are not going to change the way we worship,” the pastor said. “We are not going to change the way we do church. But I think this shows us that we have to remain incredibly vigilant.”
