2019 Tacoma attack

The incident took place at 4:00 a.m. at the Northwest Detention Center, a privately owned detention center for undocumented immigrants.[1] Four officers arrived at the scene and called out to van Spronsen, who they claimed was wearing a satchel and carrying flares, before reporting "shots fired". According to the statement by the Tacoma Police Department, Van Spronsen, who was reported to have been carrying a rifle, "attempted to ignite a large propane tank and set our buildings on fire" and "continued throwing lit objects and firebombs at the buildings and cars". Officers promptly shot him dead.[2][4][5]

Friends of van Spronsen reportedly received farewell letters from him before the incident.[2]

Willem van Spronsen (1950–2019) was a carpenter and a resident of Vashon, Washington,[6][1] who had been arrested previously during a demonstration at the same ICE detention center in June 2018.[1][7] In the earlier incident, he had a physical altercation with a police officer during an effort to free a protester who was detained. Police alleged that van Spronsen was armed with a baton and a folding knife.[1] According to The Washington Post, van Spronsen was an anarchist who claimed to be associated with antifascists known as antifa.[8] Van Spronsen's daughter, who describes herself as an advocate of liberal pacifism, said her father was a supporter of anarchism but had written that she disagreed with him "on some principles, such as the use of force and weapons in the fight".[9]

Van Spronsen had been active in social media under the pseudonym "Emma Durutti", a portmanteau of the names of historic anarchists Emma Goldman and Buenaventura Durruti. Van Spronsen was also a member of the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club and active in the Occupy Wall Street protests.[6][10] Van Spronsen had formerly been involved with Alcoholics Anonymous.[11]

Van Spronsen had written a manifesto detailing what he viewed as a political justification for attacking the ICE facility.[8][12][13] In this document, van Spronsen said that "it's time to take action against the forces of evil", citing "highly profitable detention/concentration camps and a battle over the semantics".[14]

In June 2020, the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) assembled a database of 893 terrorism incidents in the U.S., beginning in 1994.[15][16][17] Though the database did not link any murders to Antifa, it highlighted von Spronsen's death as the only death resulting from an anti-fascist attack, according to an analysis by The Guardian.[15]