The Washington Post – William Jacob Parsons, who was arrested Saturday on charges of making threats against Federal Emergency Management Agency employees, is publicly defending alleged actions that disrupted the agency’s efforts to help Hurricane Helene victims.
Parsons, 44, told local news outlet FOX8 WGHP that he was exercising his Second Amendment rights when he brought his gun to a FEMA site in storm-battered Lake Lure, N.C.
“They want to sit here and lie and say I was carrying guns around,” he said. “I had one gun on me, which was legally owned and sitting on the side of my hip, and I had a rifle and another pistol that were in my vehicle that were both lawful and legal to own.”
Parsons said he was motivated by social media reports claiming that FEMA was withholding supplies from hurricane victims in western North Carolina.
Such false claims are part of a wave of misinformation that has hampered hurricane recovery efforts across the Southeast.
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“I viewed it as if our people are sitting here on American soil, and they’re refusing to aid our people,” Parsons told FOX8.
The Washington Post’s efforts to reach Parsons on Wednesday were not immediately successful.
In a Facebook post before his arrest, Parsons had called for people to “overtake” the FEMA site in Lake Lure, where Helene’s muddy floodwaters left widespread devastation, FOX8 reported.
In a profile picture on Facebook, Parsons had also included the caption “verified harmful extremist.”
The Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a statement Monday that it had arrested Parsons for threatening FEMA workers, but that it had not substantiated reports of “trucks of armed militia” hunting FEMA employees.
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Both FEMA and U.S. Forest Service personnel relocated and stopped doing some of their work on Saturday as authorities investigated the reported threats …