Monroe, NY – A Putnam County man who is accused of making terrorist threats in Kiryas Joel while wearing a bulletproof vest is being held in the Orange County jail on $150,000 cash bail.
30 year old Frank Zebzda was arrested on Friday afternoon, reported News 12.
Zebzda, who claimed to be a medical proxy for a Dinev Court resident with cancer, reportedly used obscene language and intimidated children before he was taken away by New York State Police.
Dressed in body armor, a t-shirt and tan baggy shorts, Zebzda was cheerful as he was taken away from his arraignment at the Monroe Town Court telling a reporter who asked him why he was wearing a bulletproof vest that he was legally allowed to according to the second amendment.
As he was being herded back into a squad car, Zebzda called out “I love America,” to reporters, smiling and waving gleefully at news cameras and announcing “Look out for KJ, they’re corrupt.”
Zebzda’s good mood seemed to evaporate later as a judged slapped him with six charges including marijuana possession, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
Zebzda told the judge that he is mentally ill, on disability and lives with his mother.
After he was ordered held on $150,000 cash bail, Zebzda told the judge “I don’t know how I got here.”
Zebzda confessed to struggling with mental illness on Facebook.
“From the constant hell of anxiety, to the darkness of depression, from people not understanding to not listening, mental illness is a black cloud the [sic] that covers many of us though we angerily [sic] last out, have no way to cope or express how to feel better in that moment,” wrote Zebzda.
“Even the strongest of us, the ones who have conquered the disease still can’t fit in because no matter how much we beat the disease, the cloud is always there.”
Zebzda voiced support on Facebook for the Black Lives Matter movement and terror attacks both in the United States and France. According to his Facebook page, Zebzda also founded a “freedom fighting” group called The 13th Agenda, dedicated to exposing “a secret being kept about the 13th Amendment,” which abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime.
Zebzda, who claimed to be a member of the extremist anti-government Sovereign Nation movement during his Friday afternoon rants in Kiryas Joel, is due back in court on Monday. He told the judge that he wants to represent himself because “he knows the constitution very well.”
