United States Attorney Brandon B. Brown announced that a federal jury has returned guilty verdicts against Aaron Wade Knight, 31, of Noble, Louisiana, on two counts of making threats of violence against employees with the Sabine Medical Center (SMC) and the Veterans Administration (VA). United States District Judge Elizabeth E. Foote presided over the trial.
The two counts in this case stem from incidents which both occurred on June 1, 2022, when Knight made threats of violence against employees of the SMC in Many, Louisiana, and the VA in Shreveport and Alexandria. The first incident occurred in the morning hours of June 1 when Knight, who was living in Virginia at the time, called the VA hot line in Alexandria and spoke to a nurse who was working the call center. Knight proceeded to tell the nurse that he was upset about a bill he had received for a hospital visit a few weeks earlier at the SMC. As the conversation continued, Knight became more agitated and made the comment to her, “What do I need to do, do I need to blow up this place to get some help?” Out of concern about the threatening comments Knight made to her, the nurse contacted a patient advocate with the VA in Shreveport who had worked with Knight before.
The patient advocate then contacted Knight out of concern about the comments he had made moments earlier to the nurse. During the phone call, Knight became angry with the patient advocate and began to shout and made the following threatening statement to her, “do I need to go up there and shoot these motherf***rs in the f***ing face.”
Knight faces up to 5 years in prison for each count, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentencing has been set for June 26, 2023, at 1:15 p.m.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Many Police Department and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys J. Aaron Crawford and Andrew Weber.