A man in Texas, well-known by law enforcement in that state for threatening mass shootings, was jailed in Las Vegas for allegedly threatening to shoot up a local hospital and “kill a lot of people,” according to Metro Police.
Nicholas Encinias, 33, was booked Saturday at the Clark County Detention Center on one count of making threats or conveying false information concerning acts of terrorism with weapons of mass destruction, jail logs show. He remained in custody on a $500,000 bond.
In a phone interview with a Metro detective after the alleged threatening call to Spring Valley Hospital and Medical Center on Aug. 30, Encinias said he was diagnosed with psychosis and bipolar disorder, and that because of his mental illness “he feels he wants to shoot a large amount of people at times,” according to his arrest report.
In that call, Encinias identified himself as Nicholas Duran, who said he would show up to Las Vegas the following week and shoot up the hospital, noting that “other hospitals are not safe,” police said.
Police, who later identified Encinias, spoke to him on the phone, according to the report. In the call, police said, he admitted to making the threatening phone call and that he’d told a nurse on the phone that he was going to dress up in military clothing and use a “machine gun” to kill people, police said.
Encinias said he was upset that he’d received bad treatment at the hospital during one of his visits to Las Vegas, police said. He also told the detective that he was looking for help because he didn’t want to kill “a lot of people.”
An investigation determined that Encinias had allegedly made terroristic threats across the U.S. and that he’d had multiple interactions with police in Texas, police said.
Two weeks before he called the Las Vegas hospital, Encinias was taken into custody in Austin, Texas, where he was “well-known,” police said. In that incident, he was armed with a replica gun and dressed like the Joker comic book character.
Encinias allegedly told police there that he was “practicing for a larger incident,” Metro said.
Encinias is next due in court on Sept. 30.
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