A former Haitian Olympic boxer, Azea Augustama, was arrested and detained by US authorities in North Miami for threatening to shoot up a gym in South Florida, US.
Augustama was arrested on Tuesday according to an arrest affidavit after putting a deposit down to buy an AK-47 and was accused of three felonies, CNN has reported.
The three felonies are two counts of issuing written threats to commit a mass shooting and one count of threatening to kill or do bodily harm.
Police revealed in a document that Augustama’s membership at the Boxr gym in Miami was revoked on November 11 after an argument.
“Something was off. He was just acting a little funny and started acting aggressive,” Mateo Attalla, the owner of Boxr said.
On Tuesday morning the 39-year-old 2008 Olympics boxer called the police and returned to the gym to get his belongings.
“He was escorted in with cops to get belongings and, of course, belongings weren’t there,” Attalla said.
The same day, he made several disturbing social media posts that contained “threats to kill or do bodily harm with a firearm,” a detective said in the arrest report.
According to Attalla, Augustama tagged the gym in some of the threatening Instagram posts and included a receipt for a deposit for an AK-47, and later deleted them.
Police said an Instagram profile belonging to him showed at least three posts with pictures of the Parkland school shooter, including one taken during the massacre in 2018.
A post on Instagram revealed an image of the Parkland school shooter during a court hearing with a caption that appeared to threaten the employees at the gym where Augustama had been a member.
According to the affidavit, he also sent someone a message with a picture of one of the potential victims, indicating “he’s first when I get my gun or with something else first (RIP).”