A 66-year-old Virginia man is charged with threatening to burn Vice President Kamala Harris alive to see her suffer.
A prosecutor for the Western District of Virginia said Frank Lucio Carillo was in court Monday for a preliminary hearing over death threats he made against the vice president, who’s also the Democratic party’s nominee for president in November.
Using the name “joemadarats1” on his GETTER social media account, Carillo mentioned Harris nearly 20 times, prosecutors said. Some of those postings were menacing in nature including one claiming the 59-year-old politician would regret running for the presidency after he plucked “out her eyes with a pair of pliers.”
Carillo is also accused of threatening to shoot anyone who tried to protect Harris in that July 27 post.
Another comment on the suspect’s GETTER account calls for someone to incinerate the Democratic candidate.
“Kamala Harris needs to be put on fire alive,” he wrote the same day, according to a Friday court filing. “I will do it personally if no one else does it. I want her to suffer a slow agonizing death.”
Also last week, Carillo allegedly wrote to Harris “Just for being a Democrat you’re going to die.”
Law enforcement officers said in an affidavit they found a rifle and a handgun in the suspect’s home Winchester, Virginia, home during a search last week. When police came to Carillo’s door, he reportedly asked if their visit was “about the online stuff” and didn’t deny posting the messages.
The 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be highly contentious. Republican candidate Donald Trump has recently escalated his attempts to draw attention to Harris being a woman of color.
He’s also planted the seed that, if he loses in November, it will be because the election was somehow rigged. He made that same false assertion after being defeated handily by President Joe Biden in 2020.
Days before the Republican National Committee made Trump its presidential candidate for third straight time last month, a Pennsylvania gunman fired several shots at the 78-year-old Queens native at a rally, wounding the nominee’s ear.
It remains unclear why the shooter, a 20-year-old registered Republican, attempted to assassinate the party’s representative to lead the country.
Harris put out a statement condemning the “abhorrent act” that nearly killed her opponent.
