A man was arrested Tuesday during an FBI raid after allegedly threatening the Islamic Center of Rochester.
According to a Department of Justice press release, investigators traced a threatening voicemail received by the center to 53-year-old William M. Putnam. The voicemail was sent on November 15 around 1:23 p.m.
“I’m coming to your office with a few friends, we all have shotguns,” Putnam allegedly said in the voicemail.. “We are walking into your front door, and we are going to shoot everybody that’s on the phone in the (expletive) head. How do you like that? That’s what’s going coming your way very soon, you scumbag foreigner (expletives).”
Rochester First reports that one of the victims receiving the voicemail said they had seen Putnam at the Islamice Center a few times in the past year. Putnam has 12 criminal victions, including two felonies and one violent felony.
The New York Mental Hygiene Law required that Putnam be taken to the Rochester General Hospital for observation. He will appear for his next hearing on November 29.
AsAmNews is published by the non-profit, Asian American Media Inc.
We are currently funded by our readers and such charitable foundations as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AARP, Report for America/GroundTruth Project & Koo and Patricia Yuen of the Yuen Foundation.’
Find additional content on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram , Tiktok, X, and YouTube. Please consider interning, joining our staff, or submitting a story, or making a tax-deductible donation.
You can make your tax-deductible donations here via credit card, debit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and Venmo. Stock donations and donations via DAFs are also welcomed. Contact us at info @ asamnews dot com for more info.
