Alabama Woman Indicted for Vowing to 'Put a Bullet Through' Trump at the Alabama-Georgia Game

A north Alabama woman has been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly vowing on Facebook to shoot President Trump if he showed up at the Alabama-Georgia football game in Tuscaloosa. Megan Lorraine Utz, 36, of Courtland, faces two felony counts: threatening the president and sending a threat across state lines, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Alabama announced Thursday.

The post, prosecutors say, went up on Oct. 5, five days before the Oct. 10 game at Bryant-Denny Stadium. It read: "I'll put a bullet through him if he dares."

She is now at least the third person federally charged this month with threatening to shoot Trump at one of his October appearances, after cases in Syracuse, N.Y., and the Wichita, Kan., area.

What the complaint says

The full comment was harsher than the line in the press release. A Huntsville TV station posted on Oct. 2 that Trump planned to attend the game. Around Oct. 5, a Facebook account under the name "Kase Utz" shared it with the words: "He's not allowed in my stadium! I'll put a bullet through him if he dares," WAFF reported from the court file.

Investigators tied the account to Utz by matching its profile picture to her driver's license photo, down to a distinctive neck tattoo, and Facebook's records matched her birthday and placed her in Florence, per WAFF.

On Oct. 6, FBI agents, Secret Service agents and Florence police went looking for her at the Salvation Army where she had been staying. She had left in a light-blue pickup. Agents found the truck on Midway Street. Utz opened the door, shut and locked it, then ran on foot. Officers caught her about two blocks away, WAFF reported.

She was booked on a separate misdemeanor warrant for harassing communications out of Guin, a small town in northwest Alabama, the DOJ said. Agents seized her iPhone. After agreeing to talk, she said she had suffered 18 concussions and taken several prescription medications, blamed malware for the post, asked to have her phone checked for hacking, and asked officers, "How am I going to shoot him?" The phone went to an FBI forensics lab, according to WAFF.

The court file also lists a 2024 local warrant over harassing messages, a recent theft report naming her as a suspect, and her removal from both a rehab facility and the Salvation Army, WAFF reported. Federal charges were first filed Oct. 8, and she is set to be arraigned in Birmingham on Nov. 4, per WAFF and ABC 33/40.

"Multiple attempts on his life"

U.S. Attorney Phillip W. Williams Jr. didn't treat it as a throwaway post. "In an era in which our current President has faced multiple attempts on his life we will act swiftly to address threats such as those listed in this complaint," he said.

FBI Birmingham's Special Agent in Charge David R. Fitzgibbons drew the line plainly: "People have every right to express their views, but when that expression turns into a threat against the President of the United States, it becomes a priority matter," he said.

Trump never made it to Tuscaloosa. He dropped his plans to attend the game as Hurricane Isaias closed in, saying he wanted emergency responders focused on the storm, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

A pattern this month

Utz's case lands on top of two others. In Syracuse, Christopher Vignogna, 26, allegedly asked a co-worker on Oct. 7 whether her boyfriend could buy him a gun so he could shoot Trump at his Oct. 9 rally at the Oncenter downtown. "Trump is coming to Syracuse and I want to shoot him," he said, according to the federal complaint, as reported by the Oneida Dispatch. The co-worker said he made a gun gesture with his hand, CNY Central reported.

He told the Secret Service he "was just joking," per the Rome Sentinel. Another co-worker told investigators he said he wanted to "shoot everything up," CNY Central reported. He pleaded not guilty and was released on conditions, and his case is due back in court Oct. 30.

Then in Kansas, Jaden John Read, 24, of Clearwater was arrested Oct. 17, two days before Trump's rally for Sen. Roger Marshall in Park City outside Wichita. Prosecutors say he wrote under local TV news posts, "Can we shoot him in Kansas please I will myself," and "IK where your speech will be. Already mapped out roofs around. Finna get kirked since yall couldn't help him," the Wichita Eagle reported. That last line is an apparent reference to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, ABC News noted, who was shot by a rooftop sniper.

"Political violence and threats of political violence will not be tolerated," Kansas U.S. Attorney Ryan A. Kriegshauser said, per the Wichita Eagle. Read faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

What happens next

Each threat count carries up to five years in federal prison. Vignogna is back in court Oct. 30 and Utz is arraigned Nov. 4, the day after the midterms, while Read stays in federal custody pending a detention hearing. In all three cases, agents tracked the suspect down within days of the threat, before the event it named.