Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Man’s anti-government rants caught Metro’s attention

Shortly before allegedly punching and threatening to kill his wife, the apparently intoxicated and heavily armed 24-year-old man stepped in front of a camera.

In the 15-minute video filmed and posted to YouTube on July 1, Bryce Cuellar slurred and mispronounced his words, declaring he was a Christian warrior ready to kill homosexuals and Satanists, according to authorities.

Cuellar has been known to Metro Police for about three years, during which time he has increasingly radicalized, according to his arrest report. The July message was aggressive enough to constitute a credible threat.

It was also credible enough to a jury, which indicted him Wednesday, court records show. He is to face one felony count each of making threats or conveying false information concerning acts of terrorism, conspiracy to commit a crime, and one misdemeanor of attempting to destroy evidence.

Cuellar was arrested the night he filmed the video on one count of misdemeanor domestic battery, police said. The next day, Interpol, alerted by Google, reached out to Metro's counterterrorism center to report the video.

In an interview, Cuellar told detectives he "screwed up with the video" and that he was angry, and drunk from consuming substantial amounts of beer in a 30-minute span, but that he was not a murderer, the report said. His wife, also booked at the Clark County Detention Center that day, provided little assistance in the investigation.

Familiar video

With a camera recording, Cuellar pulls out two assault weapons, a 308 sniper rifle and a .22-caliber AR-15-type rifle, police said. He wears a military flak vest and night-vision goggles.

He is tired of America and its government, which wants to take his First and Second Amendment rights, and he's eager to use his weapons as the Founding Fathers intended, he tells the camera, according to police.

Cuellar's ideology is rooted in government conspiracies, such as one involving the Illuminati, which some believe to be a secret society that controls world governments and economies, police said.

"America is done and America is over, 'F--- America' and he will fire his gun in order to initiate a civil war within the United States and within the government," he said, according to the report. He ends by saying he wants to kill Satanists and homosexuals.

A detective who prepared the arrest report wrote that the video is similar to propaganda videos produced by international terrorist organizations.

Online ideology

Google removed the July 1 video but sent Metro a link to a copy.

A YouTube channel registered to a Bryce Cuellar shows five video uploads.

In the 15 minutes of "The Satanic New World Order Plot of the Illuminati EXPOSED" uploaded in 2014, images and video flash highlighting modern conspiracy theories, one of them being that the Twin Towers in New York were destroyed by preset detonations instead of by airliners smashing into them in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Online posts credited by authorities to Cuellar also demonstrate his "long-held" anti-government, sovereign citizen and militia ideologies, which have increasingly turned more aggressive the past three years, police said.

Cuellar is being held at the Clark County Detention Center where he is serving time for the battery conviction until November, jail logs show. On the charges stemming from the video, he's being held on a $100,000 bail.

Before his indictment, Cuellar appeared in a competency hearing. The case has been sent to an upper court and his next court appearance was scheduled for Sept. 1.

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