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On the night of Jan. 4, four avowed white supremacists entered a secure multi-industry property just across the Tennessee River that includes a nuclear power plant.
Two of those men, Aiden Daniel Cuevas, 19, and Aidan Christian Stamper, 19, hail from Madison, Alabama. The other two men are identified as Brandon Dean Crews, 24, of Iuka, Mississippi, and Logan Gulbranson, 18, of Cole Harber, North Dakota.
The Tishomingo County Sheriff’s Office has charged all four men with felony trespassing and burglary in connection to the incident.
According to an incident report filed on Jan. 7, 2025, Lieutenant Michael Voyles of the Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks observed a vehicle parked alongside (Tishomingo) County Road 989 outside the fence of Tri-State Commerce Park on the night of Jan. 4 and began to investigate.
He reported that “he could see where someone had gone under the fence to enter the park,” and assuming the person or persons had entered the park to hunt, decided to wait for them to return to the vehicle. Fellow lieutenant Ricky Barry soon showed up and the two decided to wait down the road for the vehicle.
Two hours later, the four men emerged from the woods. Voyles executed a traffic stop and recovered a rifle, a handgun and three cell phones from the four occupants. The men were all arrested on a 48-hour hold for investigation.
The following day, Tishomingo County Sheriff Jamie Stuart, Sergeant Wesley Wellington, and Investigator Mitchell Walls met Voyles at the site to investigate further. Walls provides the narrative in the Jan. 7 incident report.
Walls reported that Wellington located four coils of wire laying on a road and in the woods not far from where Voyles said that the car was sitting. Walls photographed the wire and the search continued. Stuart also obtained footage according to the report that shows some of the individuals entering a “turbine building” on the site and “moving around with flashlights” before leaving the building.
A brochure from the Tishomingo County Development Foundation shows the site plan for the Trip-State Commerce Park northeast of Iuka, Mississippi.
Tri-State Commerce Park
An image from the brochure from the Tishomingo County Development Foundation.
The Tri-State Commerce Park is a 3,500-acre industrial complex that currently serves as the region home to companies like Caterpillar, Orbital ATK/Northrup Grumman, Tiffin Motorhomes, Nucor, PCA, and Toyota.
A brochure marketing the site by Tishomingo County Development Foundation boasts of the property’s “dual electric service from three generating sources (water, nuclear, and natural gas).”
The brochure also touts a 66,500 square-foot turbine building, presumably the same building described in the incident report as a facility explored and possibly burglarized by the four white supremacists.
Extremism researcher finds incident worrisome
Jeff Tischauser, a research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s Intelligence Project, has monitored the online activity of all four men arrested in the incident.
He says they make up the core of a group calling themselves the “North Bama Brigade” in online white supremacist and neo-Nazi circles.
Tischauser said he found the men’s arrest at the site of critical infrastructure deeply concerning.
“If you look at what these four gentlemen post online about what they believe in, the ideology that they follow, and the belief that they hold in their heart: these are accelerationist neo-Nazis,” Tischauser said. “These are young kids—some of them are still teenagers—committed to bringing about a nationalist socialist society. And they’re willing to use violence to achieve this objective, at least according to their social media posts. It could be bluster, they could be trying to troll people and make people like me look foolish—but I tend to trust what people say, especially when it’s about violence.”
The group has been on Tischauser’s radar since early 2024 based on propaganda videos they posted. He said the small group has participated in distributing racist propaganda and training in MMA fighting, and embraced partnering with a wide coalition of supremacist groups including Tennessee Active Club, 2119 Blood and Soil Crew, Patriot Front and others.
Tischauser said all four men could be connected back to Tennessee Active Club leader Sean Kauffmann, who posted online that he sees himself as a “Shredder” figure from the series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, building a “literal underground army” of rebellious youth. Gulbranson, whose address is listed as North Dakota on the arrest record, has at times lived with Kauffmann in Tennessee and is believed to still be in the area, which explains his activity with the North Bama Brigade.
Tischauser said these connections to hardened supremacists such as Kauffmann reinforce the threat these individuals pose at a site hosting critical infrastructure.
“Accelerationist neo-Nazis see attacks against electrical grids and infrastructure as helping to accelerate the collapse of our social system,” Tischauser said. “They think that the race war is right around the corner.”
A screenshot of messages in a Telegram group.
Telegram profile linked to Crews posted about arrest
Screenshots shared with APR appear to show Crews discussing the arrest in a Telegram group. The screenshots were provided by Appalachia Research Club, an independent research collective, that worked with Tischauser to identify Stamper and with journalist Jordan Green to identify Cuevas last year.
A profile simply named “Dean,” which ARC identified as belonging to Brandon Dean Crews, first posted to the group in apparent reference to the arrest at 7:54 p.m. on Jan. 9.
An image shared on Telegram shows Brandon Dean Crews, left, and three others. The image is identified by the poster as a meeting to discuss bond. Aiden Stamper is identifiable on the right by the spider tattoo on his right arm.
“Fellow fishermen ive been hit by the law for exploring lands near the river,” Dean wrote to the group. “My life is f—ed now … 2 felonies.”
When asked where he was fishing, Dean replied “Tennessee River,” which borders Tri-State Commerce Park.
Dean goes on to list the two felonies as burglary and felony trespassing before emphatically defending himself “I DIDN’T STEAL ANYTHING.”
He tells the group he’s looking at “major time” because the land was “gov property apparently” before telling the group to “make me a martyr.”
One member of the group asked Dean whether he went “over any fences” to which Dean responded that “you can’t fence a river.”
Dean tells the group that he expected to merely be facing misdemeanor trespassing charges.
“Then they mentioned felony charges and I started thinking ‘well f— I gotta kill myself now, im not gonna get raped by tyrone in prison,” Dean wrote. “Im going to a Jackson prison im going to be the 1%. Im going to n—–ville USA”
Stamper’s criminal history catches up with him
Stamper is already in legal trouble in Alabama, facing first-degree retail theft related to string of thefts at Home Depot in Madison.
Court documents allege that Stamper is guilty of the crime based on multiple incidents spanning from November 2023 to February 2024. The items stolen in the incidents are not listed.
Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch revealed Stamper’s online activity in white supremacist circles, where he took the name “angry fascist.”
Scoop Nashville also identified Stamper as the Alabama man charged with defacing Nashville homes with swastikas and other white supremacists symbols when he was a juvenile.
