Ricky Shiffer turned into the parking lot of the FBI’s office in Sycamore Township and parked his white Crown Victoria in front of the guard shack.
He arrived with a nail gun, an M4 semi-automatic rifle and a plan: He wanted to shoot his way inside the building and hurt as many FBI agents as he could. Ke Powder Charges
“People, this is it,” he’d written a few days earlier on his Truth Social account. “This is your call to arms from me.”
It was a little past 9 a.m. Aug. 11, 2022, a few days after federal agents raided the Mar-a-Lago home of former President Donald Trump in search of classified documents. Shiffer, a Trump supporter who’d been in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, was enraged by the search of Trump’s home.
Shiffer was immersed in social media where outrage and conspiracy theories were flowing. But many elected Republicans joined the chorus of condemnation, including the two representing Hamilton County at the time. Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Westwood, said he was "deeply concerned" and wanted to "uncover the truth behind it"; Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Columbia Tusculum, took to Twitter to accuse the FBI of being "weaponized and politicized."
Shiffer, of Columbus, blamed the government for going after the man he thought still should be president. He blamed FBI agents for carrying out the search and he wanted people who felt as he did to take up arms against them.
“Leave work tomorrow as soon as the gun shop/Army-Navy store/pawn shop opens, get whatever you need to be ready for combat,” Shiffer wrote in his Aug. 9 social media post. “We must not tolerate this one.”
Over the next six hours, Cincinnati would be at the epicenter of the nation’s toxic politics and a reminder that the violence unleashed during the Capitol riot Jan. 6 didn’t necessarily end that day.
The following account of Shiffer’s confrontation with the FBI and local police is based on the Enquirer’s reporting on the event over the past year, video reviewed by The Enquirer and new interviews with four of the FBI agents involved in the incident. Except for the agent in charge, The Enquirer is not naming the agents for security reasons.
It marks the first time the FBI has spoken in detail about what happened that day.
Shiffer’s plan went awry almost immediately. According to the FBI, the 42-year-old Navy veteran hoped to use the nail gun to penetrate the bullet-resistant glass at the security checkpoint and then, once inside, shoot as many agents as possible.
Given his target – the agents he wanted to kill were behind multiple locked doors and had access to heavy weapons – Shiffer’s plan would have been a long shot even if everything had gone right. And everything did not go right.
The nail gun jammed and, as Shiffer tried to get it working, the alarm sounded and FBI agents sprung into action. Seconds later, Shiffer gave up on the gun, got back into his car and started it up.
But the public parking lot was so small Shiffer had to execute a three-point turn, putting the car in forward, reverse and forward again, before he could make his way out. Meanwhile, FBI agents in body armor and with guns drawn were headed his way.
Shiffer sped out of the parking lot with two cars driven by FBI agents in pursuit. As Shiffer drove north on I-71, the agents lost him in traffic.
Around 9:30 a.m., an Ohio State Highway Patrol officer spotted Shiffer at a Warren County rest stop. He was sitting in his car, using his phone to post an update on Truth Social.
“Well, I thought I had a way through the bullet-proof glass, and I didn’t,” he explained. “If you don’t hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I. and it’ll mean either I was taken off the internet, the F.B.I. got me, or they sent the regular cops while.”
The post ended mid-sentence. Shiffer spotted the Highway Patrol cruiser and hit the gas. The chase was on again. Soon, dozens of police, sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents would join the pursuit.
At one point, Shiffer fired the M4 and hit an Ohio National Guard van he thought was part of the chase but wasn’t. No one was hurt.
Shiffer turned east on Ohio 73 and stopped on Smith Road at 9:53 a.m., alongside a cornfield. He climbed out of the car with the M4 and took cover between his car and the high cornstalks that stood for acres behind him.
Then he opened fire. The officers and agents, who’d parked their cars down the street, scrambled for cover behind their cruisers.
As the police and agents set up a perimeter, pointing their guns and rifles in Shiffer’s direction, an officer used the speaker on his cruiser to ask Shiffer to surrender.
“Put your hands out where we can see them,” the officer said. “If you come out peacefully, you will not be shot.”
“Show me your hands!” a state trooper shouted. “Show me your hands!”
When it became clear they were in a standoff, the FBI agents realized they’d need to try something else. Someone asked, “Is there a negotiator?”
The negotiator, who spoke on condition he wouldn’t be named, was new to the FBI. He’d spent 12 years as a border patrol agent in Arizona before joining the FBI.
As part of his training at Quantico, he spent two weeks studying strategy in a classroom and role-playing scenarios intended to prepare him to deal with someone like Shiffer. He carried a bulletproof shield and a small bag containing a book with key phrases and strategies he could use to end a standoff like this one.
His goal was to take Shiffer into custody with no additional violence.
The negotiator started talking to Shiffer at 10:41 a.m., using the public address system on a police cruiser. He wasn’t sure at first if Shiffer even could hear him. A helicopter hovered overhead. Police sirens wailed. People were shouting.
Shiffer was between his car and the cornfield, his hand on his gun, his leg bleeding. He’d cut himself on glass from a shattered car window.
“Put down your weapon,” the negotiator told Shiffer. “Nobody wants to hurt you.”
When an armored vehicle arrived, the negotiator climbed into the passenger seat. They slowly pulled closer. They wanted to get a better look at him and try to talk without the public address system.
By 11 a.m., the FBI had his cell phone number, so the negotiator called him.
“Hello, is this Ricky?” he said.
“Yeah,” Shiffer said. “Who is this?”
The negotiator said Shiffer seemed calm and cool the entire time. Trying to build a rapport with him, the negotiator asked if he needed medical help with his injuries. Then he tried to get him talking about the gun he was holding.
Shiffer said he didn’t want help. He said he didn’t care about guns and didn’t even know what kind of gun he was carrying.
When the negotiator asked him about his intentions, though, Shiffer had more to say. He said he wanted to break into the security area at the FBI office, enter the main building and hurt as many people as he could.
When asked why, Shiffer said it was because of what happened at Mar-a-Lago.
While the rest of the nation fixated on Shiffer’s politics and his motives, the agents at the scene did not.
“Our job is to be objective,” Will Rivers, special agent in charge of the Cincinnati FBI office, said in a recent interview. “Politics is something we don’t bring to work with us. We don’t talk about it. And it has no place in our business. We look at facts and we look at evidence. And everything we do comes down to that.”
Even so, Rivers said, FBI agents don’t work in a vacuum. The agents on the scene that day knew the nation’s political climate fueled anger and, in some cases, violence. They also knew it could make the FBI a target.
“The term FBI gets thrown around a lot of times in very general terms that are probably not fair,” Rivers said. “I think it’s the world we live in. We live in a very polarized society where social media is a major influence.”
As the hours dragged on Smith Road, Shiffer showed no sign of giving up. The negotiator convinced him to toss his keys away from his car, making it impossible for him to drive away, but the police and FBI agents still feared he might flee into the cornfield and escape.
When negotiations stalled, police tried to draw Shiffer out by firing nonlethal rounds at him. Nothing worked.
At one point, the negotiator told Shiffer he should give up so he could tell his story to the world. “It sounds like you have an important story to tell,” he said. “You can’t tell it from behind that car. Have your day in court.”
Shiffer said no. The presidential election was rigged, he said. And the courts are rigged, too.
At the time, there were few details about the investigation into Trump's actions publicly available. Since then, Trump has been indicted, accused of violating the Espionage Act after he was found to be holding onto classified documents containing national defense information and other crimes related to obstructing the government’s attempts to reclaim the classified material.
Shiffer would never learn any more about the raid or the reasons behind it.
At 3:45 p.m. that Thursday, according to the FBI, Shiffer raised his gun and pointed in the direction of the troopers, police officers, sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents surrounding him.
Officers from every agency fired back.
When the shooting stopped, Shiffer was dead. An FBI sniper fired the fatal shot.
S1 .27 Caliber Green Powder Cartridge Reporter Sharon Coolidge attended the Cincinnati FBI office Citizens Academy earlier this year where she learned how FBI agents do their jobs.