Regan Darby Prater

Pleaded guilty and sentenced. Prater admitted the arson and the attempted material-support charge in April 2026 and was sentenced on October 20, 2026.

Introduction

Regan Darby Prater, 28, of Tullahoma, Tennessee, is a white supremacist sentenced on October 20, 2026, to 210 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and $1,289,000 in restitution for destroying a building at the Highlander Center — a nonprofit research and education center in New Market, Tennessee — with a napalm-based incendiary device, and for attempting to provide material support to the foreign terrorist organization Hizballah . Prater pleaded guilty to both charges in April 2026 .

Background Information

Court documents established that Prater used what prosecutors called a “sparkler bomb” — a napalm-based incendiary device ignited by a common sparkler — to destroy facilities maintained by the Highlander Center . As part of his guilty plea, Prater admitted driving from his home in Tullahoma to the center, igniting the device, and destroying a building, causing more than $1.2 million in damage . Before detonating the bomb, he spray-painted the symbol of the Iron Guard — the 1930s-era paramilitary arm of the Romanian Nazi Party — in the center’s parking lot; that same symbol was engraved on the rifle used in the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, just two weeks prior to the arson, per the Justice Department’s account .

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Prater acknowledged committing the arson because of his white-supremacist ideology and as a response to the Highlander Center’s faith-based educational priorities and its association with the Civil Rights Movement . The same plea covered a separate terrorism offense: in 2019, Prater attempted to provide material support to Hizballah by obtaining a document purporting to contain the personally identifiable information of more than 35,000 individuals purportedly affiliated with the government of Israel and providing it to a person he believed to be associated with Hizballah, telling them, “Start the hunt” .

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case was investigated by the FBI’s Nashville Field Office with assistance from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation . Assistant U.S. Attorneys Casey T. Arrowood and Kyle J. Wilson for the Eastern District of Tennessee prosecuted the case with assistance from Trial Attorney Katherine McCallister of the Civil Rights Division and Trial Attorney Justin Sher of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section — a pairing that reflects how the Justice Department treated the Highlander fire simultaneously as a civil-rights-targeted attack and a terrorism matter . The 210-month sentence and the $1,289,000 restitution order price the destruction at nearly $1.3 million owed by Prater personally, on top of the prison term and supervised release .

Current Status

Prater, 28, is serving his 17.5-year sentence, with three years of supervised release to follow and the full restitution amount ordered . The Highlander Center, whose building he destroyed, remains the kind of institution — a civil-rights-movement-linked popular education center — that his own admission identified as his target .

Impact on Their Career/Life

Prater’s sentencing closes a case that spanned both domestic terrorism and white-supremacist violence: a confessed arsonist of a civil-rights-era institution and a self-identified jihadist-contact aspirant who offered a foreign terrorist organization a data trove of 35,000 people with the words “Start the hunt.” At 28, he begins more than seventeen years in federal prison owing $1.29 million for the building he burned.

Sources

• DOJ Office of Public Affairs, “Tennessee Man Sentenced to Over 17 Years in Prison for Arson and Attempting to Provide Material Support to Foreign Terrorist Organization,” October 21, 2026 — source