Seattle police officers arrested Samuel Benson Cooney, 34, early on Wednesday after he allegedly made a fake Molotov cocktail, issued threats to burn down a downtown strip club and directed antisemitic slurs at a dancer.
“The Seattle Police Department takes these matters very seriously. The suspect has been arrested and is currently in custody,” a police spokesman told JNS. “This case will be fully investigated using all available police resources.”
In a redacted report that police shared with JNS, the arresting officer recorded that staff at a hotel saw a guest, Cooney, leave the building shortly after midnight “holding a bottle with a cloth in it.” Staff at the hotel told police they had already asked Cooney to leave the premises for erratic behavior and had deactivated his room key.
After police located him at about 1:30 a.m., Cooney said he intended to make the water bottle look like a Molotov cocktail, thinking it would be “funny.” He said that he left it outside a strip club.
As he waited for officers to find the bottle—which they later did—Cooney told the detaining officer that he aimed to “cleanse the world of pedophiles,” per the police report.
Witnesses told officers that Cooney had several drinks and made antisemitic comments to a dancer. The latter told police officers that she is “often mistaken to be Jewish” and that Cooney told her she was “only after his money.” He used a slur to refer to her, said “mazel tov” and signed a receipt with a swastika, she said.
After staff asked Cooney to leave the club, he allegedly threatened to “burn the place down,” adding, “not by me, but by my Nazi friends.”
When police found a drawing of a Star of David and a noose in Cooney’s pocket, he told the officer that there was “nothing illegal about drawing the Star of David” and the noose was “just a rope.”
The officer asked Cooney whether he is Jewish, and the latter said he is. But the officer recorded that, based on Cooney’s statements and drawings, there was probable cause that he had committed antisemitic hate crimes.
Cooney, who has a criminal history, including previous investigations into hate crimes, felony harassment and assault of a child, as well as multiple counts of assault, was booked at the King County Correctional Facility, per jail records.
A search of the suspect’s alleged social media turned up swastikas, images glorifying Luigi Mangione—who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—and a profile picture representing a rumored Nazi society.
“Our bias crimes coordinator has been notified of this case,” the police department told JNS. “She will determine if she needs to coordinate with our community.”
