A 20-year-old Oklahoma man who pledged allegiance to ISIS was eying the iconic Oklahoma Sooners football stadium for a terrorist attack in 2023, court documents revealed this week.
The University of Oklahoma stadium holds more than 80,000 fans and games are frequently televised nationally.
Landon Kyle Swinford is awaiting sentencing in Oklahoma City federal court for possession of child pornography and communicating a threat about bombing a synagogue after pleading guilty late last year to the two felony counts.
However, he allegedly had other terrorist schemes besides a synagogue attack, one of them the stadium, a prosecution sentencing memo obtained by news outlets revealed this week. The Oklahoman reported:
Swinford texted an undercover law enforcement officer on Sept. 30, 2023, after attending an OU game with his grandparents, prosecutors disclosed in a sentencing memorandum. He told the undercover officer he “had looked at barricades and security and thought the stadium could be a potential target for an attack.”
Swinford then scouted the stadium with an undercover officer who was posing as a fellow ISIS supporter.
Swinford had made contact with the undercover agent in 2023 on a social media platform after the young man had posted ISIS propaganda. They were reportedly in communication from May until that October.
Swinford allegedly had other ambitious plans. He told the undercover officer he intended to travel to Tunisia to fight for the Islamic State. And, he texted that he had picked out another target in New Orleans, a Voodoo temple there. He told the FBI that he researched explosions using butane and propane.
According to the Oklahoman:
He wrote they would need two to five more people for an operation against the voodoo temple in New Orleans, prosecutors disclosed in the memo. He texted he would execute the priestess while others executed the rest of the people in the temple. He wrote they would then douse the location with gasoline and set off an explosion with butane tanks.
However, according to Fox 25 in Oklahoma City, Swinford’s plans were impeded by lack of money and by his mother, who discovered Muslim garb — a garment called a thobe and a skull cap known as a kufi — in his bedroom in October of 2023. All communication with the undercover officer then stopped.
The court document stated:
Based on the (undercover officer’s) interaction with Mr. Swinford, the obstacles of traveling overseas, and his lack of money, it appeared there was not an imminent threat of violence from him in the Oklahoma area and that travel plans were something Mr. Swinford planned to work on over an extended period of time.
Swinford also had been accepted into an aviation mechanics school and was scheduled to begin attending in February of 2024. The FBI brought him in for an interview the following month, where court records say he admitted to making the terrorist plans.
A federal grand jury indicted Swinford last summer. He could face 45 years in federal prison for the threats.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
