THE LAST POST: On the YouTube channel of Abram Hamic, who committed suicide while being investigated for making threats against a president.
A Secret Service investigation of threats on a U.S. president by a Cleburne County man ended last month when a team of law officers from mulitiple agencies, employing a drone and an armored vehicle, went to serve a warrant and found the man had committed suicide.
ABRAM HAMIC: From YouTube video.
The dead man was identified by the Cleburne County sheriff’s office as Abram Hamic, 47, who lived on White Rock Road in the northern end of the county on a hillside overlooking the middle fork of the Little Red River. (The mailing address is Shirley, but the area is referred to as Edgemont.) He was found dead with a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol near his hand. He was shot through the roof of his mouth while sitting on a reclining sofa. The death has been ruled a suicide by the medical examiner.
Investigators found no explosives on the property, something he’d reportedly threatened in a social media post along with warnings to law enforcement officers who might attempt to take him into custody.
One friend from the area who spoke with me briefly said Hamic had long had mental issues. In the last two videos on his YouTube Channel, titled “German Shepherd Ranch,” he identifies himself “Q” at one point and on the last one he identifies himself as “God almighty.” He says on that video, posted on Jan. 30, that he believed people living near him were agents of the government and that he was under surveillance.
LOOKOUT: Police tape on tree marks spot where Secret Service agent kept watch on Hamric’s home, the white spot in distance. Courtesy Richard Herget.
He was correct about the surveillance, if not government connections of his neighbors. Richard Herget, a retired Little Rock business executive, lives across the hollow from the property on which Hamic installed his mobile home. He said law officers observed Hamic’s home from his property and he was there when officers and an armored vehicle from the White County sheriff’s office advanced on the property at 1 p.m. Feb 5. A closer neighbor, Steve Haralson, a retired engineer, said the Secret Service had also observed from his property. Law officers (not the Secret Service, I was told by the agency Monday, March 8) had first flown a drone over the Hamic fifth-wheel trailer to look for activity. Hamic apparently had not answered calls by agents attempting to establish contact. A team including White County, Cleburne County, Secret Service and Game and Fish officers established a perimeter before attempting to serve the warrant. The White County special response team then entered the trailer and found Hamric dead. The sheriff said it appeared he’d been dead for several days.
Allen Bryant, special agent in charge of the Secret Service office in Little Rock, confirmed that the agency had investigated a threat to a “protectee” (this includes the president, former presidents, family and others) and participated in the Feb. 5 event. But, he said, “what we found when we got there curtailed what we needed to do in that regard.” Bryant wouldn’t discuss the specific nature of the threat. He referred other questions to the Cleburne County sheriff, Chris Brown. Though most accounts indicate Hamic’s threats were directed at the current president, a sheriff’s report refers to an investigation of a “threat against a former president.”
Despite a reported threat of boobytraps, no explosives were found. The officers took custody of Hamic’s German shepherd, Delta. The Secret Service said it doesn’t have the dog, as I’d been told initially. It was taken by a Game and Fish officer originally. Final arrangements for Hamic are pending. The body is being held by a local funeral home, which has been in contact with a son in Texas, but no arrangements have been made. Hamic had told Herget he was estranged from his family.
Sheriff Brown said the sheriff’s office had received a report on Jan. 29 from a woman who followed Hamric on Instagram. (That Instagram account is private now.) She said he was threatening to commit suicide. A representative of a suicide prevention group went to see Hamic. He reported that Hamic “had enough guns to start his own war.” According to this account, Hamric became agitated when his visitors wouldn’t call him God and made threats toward government officials and law officers. The man, Tim, was quoted in a sheriff’s report:
Tim also stated that Hamic threatened to kill them while they were out there on the scene. He also stated that he was going to kill as many as he could and that the time is coming soon. He also stated that guns, multiple handguns, an AR-15 rifle and a large quantity of ammo was dispersed throughout the house along with the weapons.
Contact was made with the Secret Service, which began investigating and obtained an arrest warrant. I have been unable to get a copy of that warrant.
In the search after the body was found, deputies found nine weapons, including rifles, pistols and an AR-15. Haralson said Hamic, whom he’d fished with several times, often carried a holstered pistol and sometimes carried the AR-15 when he rode his property on a four-wheeler. The sheriff observed that having lots of guns is not unusual in his territory.
Herget said Hamic twice fired the AR-15 multiple times in the night in the days before he was found dead. He said he’d gone to the property to talk to Hamic about it the second time. That was when he first encountered a Secret Service agent staking out the Hamic property.
Both Herget and Haralson said they never talked politics with Hamic. But investigating officers told them he had indicated on social media that he was unhappy with the outcome of the presidential election. He reportedly made comments on Instagram saying “I am Q” and “the Proud Boys have my back.”
Haralson said he’d never considered Hamic, whom he met in 2019, a threat. “He was not that kind of guy.” But he said Hamic had changed in the last few months. On their last fishing trip in December, said Haralson, “He just talked and rambled.” It was similar to remarks on his last YouTube, he said. His earlier videos were mostly about living with his German shepherd in the country, off the grid, with emphasis on strategies for surviving. Haralson had one last encounter with Hamic when he talked with him outside Haralson’s house several days before he was discovered dead. “He whispered to me, ‘She can come out now.'” When he said it a second time, Haralson asked if Hamic was referring to his wife, but didn’t get a clear answer. Haralson said he had assumed Hamic came to see him after learning Haralson had just arranged to get mail delivery at his house, rather than at a box on the main road.
Both Haralson and Herget said they were surprised by what happened. Herget said he’d first met Hamic when he struck up a conversation at a Greers Ferry restaurant and they’d had pleasant conversations at the restaurant several times since. He’d guessed from his first appearance that he was a military veteran, as is Herget, 82, a West Point graduate. Hamic told him he’d served in Afghanistan, been wounded by an explosive device and had post-traumatic stress syndrome. He said he’d served in special forces, thus the name of his dog, for Delta Force. Herget said he’d been told since the death that this story wasn’t true, that Hamic had served only a short time, perhaps 30 days, before being discharged from the Army.
“I think Jan. 6 [the Capitol insurrection] put him over the edge,” Herget speculated.
Sheriff Brown said his office had no record of problems with Hamic. He had made a complaint about threats made by a drunk woman with a gun in a trailer park where he lived before moving to the land in the country. That call resulted in the arrest of the woman. The sheriff’s office provided no report on this, but Haralson said he’d learned since his death that Hamic had run over the mailbox of a neighbor, apparently deliberately, on the day Haralson last talked with him.
