Background: Fort Irwin, California (Google Maps). Inset: Christian Beyer booking photo (via Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office). Right: Christian Beyer (Facebook).
A U.S. Army veteran previously court-martialed for assault and who later posted a video on YouTube vowing “vengeance” for that court-martial by killing members of the military and their families at Fort Irwin in California has pleaded guilty to sending interstate threats.
Christian Ernest Beyer, 42, once stationed at Fort Irwin, was arrested and charged in November and has been detained ever since, according to the Justice Department.
In a statement on June 28, federal prosecutors said “Mr. Beyer sought to take his personal vengeance out on innocent military members honorably serving their country, as well as their families” when in October 2023 he published a three-minute video online targeting four individuals, including a military officer and chief of police at Fort Irwin, and their families and others he deemed responsible for his court-martial two years before.
“I had a great life and will die for what I believe in. If you come to get me and you have a uniform on you’re enemy and I will not look at you as anything else,” Beyer said in one video, court records show.
He faces up to five years in prison when sentenced, up to three years of supervised release, and a possible fine of up to $250,000. He will be sentenced on September 20.
In a criminal complaint, examples of Beyer’s violent threats were laid bare.
In one video targeting an official, he said:
I will f—— come and hunt you, and I’m telling you that right now and not just because I’m harboring a witness because the cops f—— made up all this s— anyway and you guys f—— ran along with them so f— you. I’m coming for you. I’m gonna kill your whole f—— family if they stay there.
Beyer was first court-martialed and convicted in 2021 after he assaulted his wife, pushed her and barricaded himself inside of his home with an unregistered gun.
When he was arrested by military police in 2021, a memorandum written by Army Brigadier General Curtis D. Taylor stated that Beyer “showed a lack of respect and decorum” when he “spit chewing tobacco on the floor of the patrol car and urinated in the police interview room” as well.
Messages and images Beyer posted online also appeared to target California Highway Patrol, according to his initial indictment. In one social media post, he shared an illustration of a police officer’s silhouette in a gun’s crosshairs. He also allegedly posted two videos of an interaction he had with the highway patrol where prosecutors said he was clearly “upset and argumentative.”
When he was arrested in November — police found him at his father’s house in Sonoma County, California — he had only days before allegedly brandished a knife and got into “an altercation with a group of elderly individuals” after he left his car in a residential neighborhood where he did not live.
After waving the knife at a man in that group, Beyer fled in his car but not before first driving toward the group of people and swerving roughly 13 feet off the street toward them, court records show. He sped off and was stopped in a parking lot and ran off on foot, prompting a manhunt that led to his arrest.
An attorney for Beyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
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