A La Vergne man is facing a felony charge after police say his online threats escalated from targeting family members to naming Gov. Bill Lee, a Nashville-area pastor and places of worship. The La Vergne Police Department announced the arrest, saying investigators feared the threats could lead to real-life violence. Officers took the suspect into custody following a struggle that left one officer and two detectives with minor injuries.
According to the WSMV report on the arrest, La Vergne police launched the investigation after being notified of online threatening statements that gradually escalated. Per rutherfordsource.com, the inquiry began after officers learned that an order of protection had been issued against the suspect in Williamson County. Police said the statements started as general threats toward family members and others in Tennessee before becoming more specific.
Those later statements named Gov. Bill Lee, Pastor Corey Trimble and public locations, according to a report from NewsChannel 5. Investigators said they sought to locate the suspect out of concern that the threats could lead to violence, according to the same rutherfordsource.com account. That fear led to a warrant for the suspect's arrest, per the investigation's findings.
A Struggle During the Arrest
The arrest itself did not go smoothly. Rutherfordsource.com reports that it followed a brief struggle that left one officer and two detectives with minor injuries; all three declined medical treatment, per the same account. The suspect was then taken for mental health observation and evaluation, NewsChannel 5 reported.
The suspect now faces a felony charge of threat of mass violence and a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest, according to NewsChannel 5's report. Tennessee's legislative text on that offense, reviewed via the Tennessee General Assembly, identifies school property, a house of worship, federal, state or local government property, and a live performance or event as the types of locations covered under a threat to commit an act of mass violence.
Multiple Agencies Joined the Investigation
The case drew a wide response from law enforcement. NewsChannel 5 reported that several agencies assisted, including the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, the Williamson County Sheriff's Office, the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office and the Murfreesboro Police Department.
The case lands amid a broader rise in threats against public officials nationally. Research from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point found that the average number of federal charges for threats to public officials rose from 38 per year between 2013 and 2016 to 62 per year between 2017 and 2022. The same review found that ideologically motivated threats accounted for nearly half of the cases studied, with that share climbing steadily over the period, and that a preliminary look at 2023 and 2024 data showed federal prosecutions on pace to hit new record highs.
Other recent cases illustrate the pattern. A Knoxville man was arrested in July 2026 in a federal case involving the interstate transmission of threats to kill public officials, according to the FBI. In a separate case out of Hawaii, the U.S. Department of Justice said a defendant was arrested and detained after allegedly leaving threatening and antisemitic voicemails with the Hawaii governor's office.
