Four days before UFC Freedom 250 kicked off on the White House South Lawn, a mother in Knox County, Ohio, picked up the phone and did something federal investigators now say may have prevented a mass-casualty attack. She turned in her own son.
Tycen Proper, a 19-year-old Ohio man, stands charged in connection with what prosecutors describe as a coordinated plot to strike the June 14 event with explosive-laden drones and shooters positioned along evacuation routes. The criminal complaint, reviewed by Fox News Digital, lays out a plan that reads less like loose internet chatter and more like a tactical operations order, one allegedly hatched in encrypted Signal channels by a group whose members claimed to be former military.
The FBI disrupted the alleged plot after local deputies in Knox County responded to the family's home and contacted federal investigators, who reviewed Proper's phone and found the Signal conversations. What they uncovered, retired FBI supervisory agent Rob Chadwick told Fox News, was "chilling."
The complaint states that Proper's mother had grown alarmed by her son's recent behavior, firearms purchases, tactical gear acquisitions, and secretive online communications with people she had never met. She observed him "researching locations near Washington, D.C., and receiving maps and images through text messages and Discord."
She contacted authorities on June 10. That gave investigators exactly four days before the UFC event.
Proper's father filled in more details for officers. He told investigators his son had recently met people online and had been planning "recons" with them. He said Proper planned to leave during the weekend of June 13 to meet members of the group in person. The father also told law enforcement his son had recently acquired firearms, body armor, ammunition, and tactical gear, allegedly spending roughly $3,000 of his graduation money on the purchases.
When his mother confronted him, Proper allegedly said the group planned to conduct "recon" and "hit and run missions." She interpreted that as planning shootings.
The family voluntarily turned over the equipment to law enforcement. Among the items, per Department of Justice images referenced in the complaint: an AR-style rifle and a bullpup rifle painted with the American flag.
The Signal chats discovered on Proper's phone discussed "plans for an attack during the June 14 UFC event at the White House, including the use of explosive-laden drones and shooters positioned near evacuation routes," the complaint states. Prosecutors allege Proper later admitted participating in the planning discussions.
The scope of the alleged conspiracy extended well beyond one teenager in rural Ohio. Just The News reported that an FBI affidavit detailed the mechanics: explosive-laden drones were to fly over the north side of the UFC arena, forcing crowds to evacuate south, directly into the line of fire from positioned snipers. The affidavit stated, "When the unmanned aircraft detonated, the intent was to force the crowd attending the UFC event and high-value targets (HVTs) to evacuate to the south."
Five suspects have been arrested so far, including Proper, 32-year-old Daniel Eskridge of Missouri, and Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez. Investigators are working to identify up to 18 additional co-conspirators who communicated through the encrypted chats. A dozen FBI offices across the country were involved in the investigation.
The White House has faced a series of security threats in recent months, including a confirmed shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner that struck a Secret Service agent.
The New York Post reported that the alleged targets included President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and multiple members of Congress. The plot allegedly involved at least 12 suspects subscribing to an "accelerationist" ideology, a fringe belief system centered on provoking societal collapse through mass violence.
Court documents cited by Newsmax show that on May 31, Proper allegedly sent a message accompanied by photographs of Republican lawmakers, writing: "These are the people we're going to focus on." The suspected ringleader, Alvarez, allegedly wrote in a chat message that the group should pursue attacks "as many and as deadly as we can get."
Eskridge, one of the arrested suspects, allegedly wrote in the group chat: "I'm liking it, now if we can keep it all coordinated it should work."
That level of specificity, targeting individual lawmakers, coordinating drone strikes with sniper positions, timing the attack to a known public event on the White House grounds, goes far beyond idle online fantasizing. And it raises hard questions about how close this came to execution.
Newsmax reported that arrests were made in California, Ohio, Missouri, and Nebraska. Weapons, ammunition, tactical vests, and other tactical gear were seized from suspects' homes. But as many as 10 additional suspects remain at large.
USSS Assistant Director Matt Quinn stated plainly: "There are still suspects at large and we're going to work it until everyone's been identified."
Federal court documents show Proper "admitted during a June 11 interview that he had participated in planning a coordinated attack intended to jumpstart a revolution in the United States." That admission, made one day after his mother's call and three days before the event, suggests the timeline was razor-thin.
The pattern of escalating threats against the White House itself has prompted bipartisan legislation to restructure Secret Service jurisdiction and place the agency directly under White House authority.
Retired FBI agent Jason Pack told Fox News Digital that the investigation highlighted the importance of family members recognizing behavioral changes and reporting them. His summary was blunt: "That's how this got stopped."
Chadwick, the retired FBI supervisory agent who appeared on "The Will Cain Show," went further:
"Thankful for the one mother's courage to come forward and say something, even though it meant the certain arrest of her own son, but that's what it's going to take, this type of surveillance or awareness of what is happening around you, understanding we are in the unprecedented time of political violence."
That phrase, "unprecedented time of political violence", deserves more attention than it typically receives. This is not the first credible threat to a sitting president or a White House event in recent memory. President Trump himself described slowing a Secret Service evacuation during the Correspondents' Dinner shooting earlier this year.
The mother in Knox County did not have a security clearance. She did not have access to encrypted chat intercepts. She had something simpler: she noticed her son had changed. She noticed the guns, the gear, the maps, the secrecy. And she made the hardest call a parent can make.
Specific charges against Proper have not been detailed publicly, and it remains unclear whether he has entered a plea. The identities of the remaining unnamed co-conspirators, the full scope of the group's communications, and the question of whether any members had genuine military backgrounds all remain open.
The political motivations behind recent attacks on White House events vary, but the operational reality is consistent: the nation's most visible public gatherings remain high-value targets, and the margin between a foiled plot and a catastrophe can be measured in days, or in one phone call.
The criminal complaint describes a plot with operational detail, drones, kill zones, evacuation-route ambushes, specific high-value targets, a timeline synced to a known public event. Five arrests across four states. Up to 18 more suspects unidentified. Weapons already purchased. Travel plans already made.
And the only reason any of it surfaced before June 14 is that one woman in Ohio trusted law enforcement more than she trusted the strangers her son had found online.
In an era when institutions routinely fail to connect the dots, a mother connected them first. That should be a source of gratitude, and a warning about how thin the line really is.