The leader of a cult group that has been linked to multiple murders, including the fatal shooting of a border patrol officer in Vermont last month, was arrested in Maryland for search charges and other crimes, authorities said on Monday.
Jack Lasota, 34, who goes through “Ziz” and has defended the dangers of artificial intelligence, was arrested on Sunday in Frostburg, a rural area approximately halfway between Pittsburgh and Washington, DC, said Maryland State Police In a statement.
The Berkeley, California, also faces a burden of firearms and obstructs and obstructs, according to the statement. Two other people, Michelle Zajko, 32, on average, Pennsylvania and Daniel Blank, 26, from Sacramento, California, were arrested for similar positions.
The three were arrested in a local prison, said the State Police. It was not clear immediately if they have lawyers to speak in their name.
The state police statement, which did not provide additional details about the charges, said the agency is working with the Federal Police and the state prosecutor’s office of Allegany County in an ongoing investigation.
Lasota, a computer programmer previously associated with a Berkeley -based organization that seeks to use mathematical and logical principles to improve the world, died in a navigation accident in August 2022, according to a brief obituary that appeared in the newspaper of his city Natal in Alaska.
But since then, theota and their associates have been linked to a series of violent attacks, including a stabbing of 2022 who left an 8 -year -old man partially blind. That victim was killed last month in a homicide that prosecutors said he had intended to avoid testifying in the trial linked to the initial attack, which is scheduled to begin this spring.
Lasota has not been accused in relation to that murder, but the authorities found her at the attack scene in 2022, only three months after she allegedly died, according to an email that a prosecutor sent to one of Lasota’s lawyers in that moment.
In January 2023, Michelle Zajko’s parents, the woman arrested on Sunday, were found dead at her home in Pennsylvania. Both had received a deadly shot. Lasota was accused of obstructing investigation into their deaths and was released from jail after having received a bail of $ 10,000.
A bench arrest warrant was issued for the arrest of Losota after she did not appear before the court. His whereabouts was unknown as recently as earlier this month.
Zajko was arrested in relation to the murder of his parents, but was then released and has not been accused in his death.
Another follower of Lasota’s, the German National Ophelia Bauckholt, was shot dead last month in an exchange of shooting with border patrol agents in Vermont. The shooting occurred during a traffic stop, when another person traveling with Backhault drew a gun and shot one of the agents, according to federal prosecutors.
The Bauckholt agent and the border patrol, David Maland, were deadly shot at the Gunbattle. According to an affidavit of the FBI, Bauckholt was shot after she took out a firearm.
The circumstances of the shooting remain under investigation, and the person traveling with Bauckholt, Teresa Youngblut, declared himself innocent of firearms charges.
Shortly after the shooting, the federal authorities sent an alert requesting the merchants of firearms in Vermont for their help to identify any purchase made by Michelle Zajko, whom the alert identifies as a person of interest in Maland’s fatal shooting.
