A 50-year-old Spotsylvania County man was arrested after investigators said an Instagram comment directed at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society’s Sterling campus threatened an explosive device at an ADAMS Center event. Adam Sawyer faces one count of threatening to bomb, a Class 5 felony under Virginia law.
The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said the alleged communication appeared on the mosque organization’s Instagram page. Investigators traced it to a residence in the 6800 block of Luce Lane in Spotsylvania, according to Daily Voice.
Loudoun investigators executed multiple search warrants at the residence Sept. 18 with assistance from Virginia State Police and the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office. The Spotsylvania sheriff’s office arrested Sawyer the next day, and he was released from Rappahannock Regional Jail on an unsecured bond, according to FFXnow.
Authorities have not publicly identified the event allegedly targeted, released the exact wording of the Instagram comment or said whether the searches recovered explosive materials. The reports also do not establish a motive. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has urged authorities to evaluate whether evidence supports a hate-crime charge, but no such enhancement has been announced.
Why the case can be handled in Loudoun
Virginia law makes it a Class 5 felony to communicate a threat to bomb, destroy or damage a place of assembly or building. The statute also permits prosecution either where the communication was made or where it was received, according to Virginia Code § 18.2-83. That provision explains why an alleged message traced to Spotsylvania may be prosecuted in Loudoun, where investigators say the ADAMS Center received it.
The Virginia Court of Appeals made the same venue point in a May 22, 2018 opinion, explaining that the statute allows a bomb-threat prosecution in either the jurisdiction where the communication originated or the jurisdiction where it was received. The rule addresses location; it does not determine whether the allegation against Sawyer can ultimately be proved.
A separate Loudoun case shows how the statute has been used
The current case is separate from a Loudoun County prosecution involving Alexander Blake Berg. Loudoun Now reported that Berg, 19, pleaded guilty after online threats against Woodgrove High School and other schools. That case also involved threatening to bomb a place of assembly, a Class 5 felony, but it concerned a different defendant, targets and outcome.
National data provide context, not a finding about motive
The U.S. Department of Justice’s summary of 2023 FBI hate-crime statistics counted 2,699 reported religion-based incidents, including 236 involving anti-Muslim bias. Those figures describe reported incidents nationwide and do not show that the Sterling allegation was bias-motivated or establish any trend in bomb threats against mosques, according to the Justice Department.
Federal case examples also illustrate why comparisons must be limited. The Justice Department reported that a New Jersey man pleaded guilty on Oct. 10, 2024, after breaking into Rutgers University’s Center for Islamic Life and destroying religious artifacts. It separately reported that a California woman received a 32-month sentence on May 24, 2024, for repeated antisemitic telephone threats against a former executive of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue and his family. Those completed cases involved property destruction or repeated personal threats, not the pending Virginia allegation.
The ADAMS Center’s Sterling campus is the site identified in the reported allegation. The charge remains an accusation, and the publicly described facts do not resolve the alleged comment’s precise wording, whether any device existed or whether prosecutors will pursue a bias-related charge.
