Ex-Guardsman gets total 6 years for mass shooting threats, illegal gun sales

A former corporal with the Ohio Army National Guard will serve a total six years in prison after his convictions Tuesday in federal court for illegal gun sales and in Franklin County Common Pleas Court for threatening to commit mass violence at a Columbus Jewish school and area synagogues where he was hired to work as a security guard.

Thomas DeVelin, 25, of Columbus' Northwest Side, wrote in a letter to a federal judge last week that he never intended to act on his admittedly “racist and ugly” online messages with other Guardsmen — which included posts about his desire to attack Jews, Black people and women.

DeVelin was sentenced by that judge Tuesday morning in U.S. District Court in Columbus to five years and 11 months in prison for illegal sales of ghost guns and altering equipment that allows semiautomatic weapons to become automatic weapons. When he gets out, he will have six years of supervised release.

U.S. District Court Judge Sarah D. Morrison said during the sentencing hearing that DeVelin has not disavowed the hatred he expressed in his online posts about killing Jews or others. He just said he would not have acted on his ideas, the judge said.

Morrison said DeVelin has downplayed his messages as "private," "funny," and how he "dealt with stress."

"(I have heard) nothing indicating that it wasn't Mr. DeVelin's true beliefs. It's very very concerning," Morrison said while sentencing him.

Hours later in a court not far away

On Tuesday afternoon, DeVelin appeared a few blocks away in Franklin County Common Pleas Court and pleaded guilty to different charges: two counts of making terroristic threats and one count of attempted illegal manufacturing or possession of explosives.

Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Andy Miller sentenced DeVelin to six years in prison to be served at the same time as his federal sentence, as jointly recommended by Franklin County prosecutors and DeVelin’s defense attorney, Bob Krapenc.

As part of a plea agreement, Franklin County prosecutors dropped charges of tampering with evidence and possessing dangerous ordnances.

Krapenc said Tuesday that DeVelin did not believe his messages would ever be made public and his history, which includes a deployment to Afghanistan, had desensitized DeVelin.

Columbus Torah Academy official: 'We will emerge from this as a stronger community...'

The Columbus Torah Academy was one of the Jewish institutions where DeVelin worked security through Sahara Global Security when DeVelin threatened online to attack students and parents.

Raanan Lefkovitz, president of the board of trustees for the Columbus Torah Academy, spoke at DeVelin’s sentencing in county court about how DeVelin’s threats have shaken his community’s sense of security.

"Although we are technically victims in this case, and as Jewish people we’re all too familiar with being targets of hate, we will not see ourselves as victims,” Lefkovitz said. “And given the choice between looking back and looking forward we will always choose to look forward. In doing so, we will emerge from this as a stronger community. No matter the threats we face, we will continue with courage and with faith to provide our children with the Jewish education in the safest way possible.”

Lefkovitz also spoke about his community’s concerns for when DeVelin is eventually released from prison.

DeVelin agreed in his plea agreement in county court to stay away from all Jewish community centers and places of worship, and to turn over all his social media passwords to supervising authorities. But Miller, the judge, said he is unable to enforce that since he is sentencing DeVelin to prison, not probation.

DeVelin has more than 250 days of jail time credit toward time served.

Both judges who sentenced DeVelin Tuesday stressed that his felony convictions mean he will never be allowed to possess a firearm again.

"No more guns," Miller said. "You’re not allowed to have them."

Our previous coverage:Ex-Ohio Guardsman accused of threatening Jewish school pleads guilty to making machine guns

Federal prosecutors: DeVelin threatened to attack Jewish school, synagogues

DeVelin pleaded guilty in October in federal court to charges that he was illegally 3-D printing and selling guns without serial numbers as well as selling devices that can turn some guns into fully automatic machine guns between 2020 and when he was first arrested in March 2022.

Federal prosecutors had asked Morrison to deviate higher than the federal sentencing guidelines and send DeVelin to prison for more than seven years.

Among other threats he made in a private online group chat filled with other Ohio Guardsmen, DeVelin posted multiple times about his desire to shoot up a Columbus Jewish school and two synagogues where he worked as a security guard, according to court documents in the federal case against DeVelin.

Among the posts cited in court documents:

In September 2021, DeVelin posted a photograph of the parking lot at an unidentified Columbus synagogue, writing that he was “having an inner debate that if an active shooter comes in I might just join him."

In January 2022, DeVelin posted a photo of the interior of Temple Beth Shalom synagogue in New Albany with the text, “the holocaust didn’t happen. If anything I’ll scream 6 million wasn’t enough.”

In March 2022, while assigned to guard the Columbus Torah Academy, DeVelin posted a photo of a gun in his lap and said, “I will shoot the next parent dropping their kid off at the school."

More from our previous coverage:Former Guardsman facing additional 'ghost gun' charges after threatening Columbus school

On another occasion, DeVelin posted a video of himself sniffing a rifle and saying, "This one smells like dead Jews."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Glenn-Applegate said at Tuesday morning's sentencing hearing that DeVelin was a trigger pull away from committing violence.

On several occasions, DeVelin posted videos of himself pointing guns at unsuspecting people through a window, according to court documents.

When Columbus police searched DeVelin’s residence and car in March 2022, they seized 17 firearms, explosive components, and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, according to a sentencing memo filed by Glenn-Applegate and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Knight.

DeVelin had a particular obsession with the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, according to the sentencing memo. Copying that shooter, DeVelin painted the same Islamophobic, xenophobic and white supremacist phrases on the magazine of one of his AR-style rifles as the Christchurch shooter did on his gun, prosecutors said.

DeVelin tells judge he was joking, never intended to carry out threats

In a letter to Morrison ahead of his sentencing, DeVelin said he felt worthless after he returned from a deployment to Afghanistan from July 2017 to March 2018.

DeVelin said he was coping with depression, alcoholism and disillusionment with the military when he started discussing dark ideas and what he says was joking with military friends on a platform they thought was private.

“Our conversations spiraled out of control into an undeclared contest to see who could come up with the darkest or ugliest ideas. At no time did I ever intend on performing these disgusting ideas or sharing these thoughts with anyone other than the members of our private group,” DeVelin said in the letter. “Now that our discussions have been made public, I realize the shock, fright, and pain it has caused others.”

DeVelin said he does not intend to associate with this military “counterculture” post-sentence.

DeVelin said he became particularly depressed after the October 2021 suicide of a fellow Guardsman at a party. An investigation into this suicide is what led law enforcement to review the private Guardsmen chat. The military took DeVelin and others at the party off the roster for an upcoming deployment to Iraq, to DeVelin’s disappointment.

One other former Guardsman was charged for threats made in the online chat. James Ricky Meade II, 26, of Chesterhill, Morgan County, pleaded guilty in Franklin County Common Pleas Court in December to one count of inciting to violence.

Meade's guilty plea was for messaging in December 2021 with DeVelin about their desire to steal a plane and crash it into the Anheuser-Busch beer plant on Columbus' North Side. Meade got probation.

Related coverage:Former Guardsman who threatened to crash plane into Anheuser-Busch plant gets probation

DeVelin and Meade were discharged from the Ohio National Guard in August 2022. A spokesperson for the Ohio National Guard said Monday he wasn't sure if the pair were dishonorably discharged or not.

Days before his arrest in March 2022, DeVelin posted in the group chat that "if the military actually decides to ever crack down on extremists, they're going to have to kick at least half of us out," according to federal court records.

jlaird@dispatch.com

@LairdWrites

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ex-Ohio Guardsman in 2 courts today for guns, threats of mass shooting