An ISIS-obsessed New Yorker who threatened to kill cops at a local St. Patrick’s Day Parade has been arrested, feds said Friday – as revelers across the country geared up to celebrate the often hectic holiday.
A resident of Yonkers, 32-year-old Ridon Kola was arrested and charged with making interstate threats ahead of the city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, slated for Saturday.
The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison, and comes after Kola directly messaged the Yonkers police force’s social media accounts to detail his planned attack.
The threats came over the course of several days, and were compounded by a series of troubling posts on the alleged domestic terrorist’s own social media.
One such post, published days after Kola direct messaged the department to say that he would ‘crucify’ cops tasked with overseeing the procession, included an image of the suspect brandishing an ax, seemingly to make good on his initial threat.
ARRESTED: A resident of Yonkers, 32-year-old Ridon Kola was arrested and charged with making interstate threats ahead of Yonkers’ St. Patrick’s Day parade, slated for Saturday
The ISIS-obsessed New Yorker’s arrest came as revelers across the country geared up to celebrate the often hectic holiday, including at the renowned NYC parade a few miles south
Sent to the Yonkers Police Department on March 9, the message saw Koala threateningly insist that the street set to house the event will be a ‘horror scene’ come Saturday, before signing off with an Arabic phrase that means ‘God is great.’
‘I will crucify Yonkers cops and their bosses all along McLean ave,’ wrote Kola in the correspondence, which was released by the Justice Department shortly after his arrest.
‘It will be a horror scene,’ the New York man continued, according to federal authorities. ‘Allahu Ekberr [sic].’
In another message sent that same day, Kola wrote: ‘First people to be crucified will be the Yonkers rats.’
While the message did not mention the parade directly, it did by proxy – with McLean being the street where the city’s event is set to be staged.
The planned event is markedly smaller than its famed Manhattan counterpart held a few miles south, which features a procession of roughly 150,000 and is attended by roughly 2million people.
That said, the Yonkers parade is no slouch, and is still expected to welcome roughly 30,000 revelers.
Following Kola’s arrest, Yonkers’ mayor announced that the event would proceed as planned, with security being a priority.
‘The message is clear. It’s not funny,’ Democrat Mike Spano said of the currently incarcerated suspect’s not-so-veiled threats, saying he ‘will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.’
‘That’s what we do,’ the mayor said of his community set 16 miles north of Manhattan. ‘That’s why this guy won’t be at the parade. Safe to say. Everyone else who wants to enjoy the parade will be here.’
Hours earlier, the US Attorney’s Office revealed they had arrested the Yonkers resident, while also detailing a series of since-deleted posts in which the suspect expressed support for the terror group, as well as a ‘war against non-Muslims.’
In one post cited by the feds, Kola showed support for fellow ISIS fanatic Sayfullo Saipov, 35, who was sentenced to life in prison this week for using a rented UHaul to plow into eight people on a New York City bike path in 2017.
‘May allah set you free my brother,’ Kola wrote in the post, which was penned on March 7, according to a criminal complaint aired by the attorney’s office.
The suspected terrorist added: ‘The real terrorists and thieves is the American i llum inati [sic]’
Other since nixed posts included Islamic artwork and imagery feds said coincide with those used by jihadist groups to express a desire for an all-Islamic world – one of the main tenets of the Islamic State.
The complaint further revealed that Kola had messaged Yonkers police’ social media with threats as early as 2021, with one message, written in Albanian, reading: ‘I am going to slaughter you little girls.’