The former Army first sergeant who threatened Army leaders in videos he posted to social media has been sentenced to prison.
Christian Ernest Beyer, 42, was sentenced by a federal judge for posting videos of himself threatening to kill multiple military personnel at the Fort Irwin Army installation in San Bernardino County.
In one of his YouTube videos, he threatened to kill Richard Payne, the Chief of Police at Fort Irwin; an officer; Master Sergeant Richard Boone; and others, whom Beyer believed to be responsible for his 2021 court martial.
“I’m calling out the people that forced me out,” Beyers told the camera. “I will f-ing come and hunt you, and I’m telling you that right now and not just because I’m harboring a witness because the cops fing made up all this shit anyway and you guys fing ran along with them so f you. I’m coming for you. I’m gonna kill your whole f***ing family if they stay there.”
In November of last year, he was charged with making interstate threats, a crime that carries a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.
On Sept. 19, he was sentenced to two years in prison after he pleaded guilty to the charges.
“Although defendant’s 23 years of service in the U.S. Army and reported mental health issues related to his service are important mitigating factors, these facts do not negate the seriousness of the offense, the significant impact to the victims — who have also admirably served in the U.S. Army for many years — and the danger the defendant poses to the public at large,” prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office wrote in their sentencing memorandum.
Beyer’s public defender, Mariah Holder, argued he may have brain damage from tank blasts and an improvised explosive device (IED) while he was in the Army.
Holder said the threats Beyer made were related to a dispute between him and his wife in which two friends and two additional colleagues tried to intervene.
“Mr. Beyer did not target any of the victims because of their status as government officers,” Holder said. “His motivation was purely personal, the result of a dispute between former friends and former colleagues.”
According to Army records, obtained by The Salty Soldier, associated with his court-martial in 2021, then-Master Sergeant Beyer was found guilty of threatening a fellow master sergeant while holding a kitchen knife.
After presumably being taken into military police custody for making the threat, then-Master Sergeant Beyer was accused of making comments that led to him being charged under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
“You’re not my type but if you take off these handcuffs I’ll make an exception… I’ve sucked d*ck before,” the Army says he told a police officer at Fort Irwin.
He was found not guilty of this charge during his court-martial but was found guilty of Article 128 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for making the threat to a fellow master sergeant.
He was also found guilty of saying, “hold my d**k” and “f**k you” to an unnamed private (E-2).
According to the federal complaint in the Central District of California, the non-commisioned officer Beyer assaulted was his wife.
He “pushed [his] wife, barricaded [himself] inside [his] residence with an unregistered firearm, and disobeyed lawful orders,” according to a federal complaint that cited a memo written by Brig. Gen. Curtis D. Taylor. After he was arrested, he “spit chewing tobacco on the floor of the patrol car and urinated in the police interview room.”
On 19 August 2022, at a special court-martial convened at Fort Irwin he was convicted of one specification disrespect to a noncommissioned officer, one specification of provoking speech, one specification of assault, and one specification of domestic violence in violation of Articles 91, 117, 128, and 128b, UCMJ.
He was sentenced to forfeit $250 per month for 4 months, to be reduced to the grade of E-7, and to be confined for 43 days.
Beyer joined the Army in 2000 and deployed to Iraq three times during his twenty-plus years of service.
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