‘Zizian’ group member provided guns in Border Patrol shootout, prosecutors say

SEATTLE – A Seattle woman charged in connection with the killing of a Border Patrol agent last month got the guns used in the shootout from an associate of a fringe group called the Zizians, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Vermont charged Michelle Zajko, 32, with making a false statement when buying firearms and said Zajko provided the guns that were used in the shootout with agents. Prosecutors also said Zajko is a person of interest in a 2022 double homicide in Pennsylvania.

Prosecutors say one of the people in the shootout was Teresa Youngblut, 21, a graduate of Seattle’s prestigious Lakeside School and a former University of Washington student. She faces two weapons charges in the deadly encounter.

Zajko was arrested Sunday in Maryland, alongside Jack “Ziz” LaSota, the apparent leader of a cultlike group concerned with artificial intelligence and extreme veganism that has been linked to six killings across the country.

The charges filed against Zajko on Tuesday also offer more detail of the rural Vermont shootout that killed Border Patrol Agent David Maland in January.

Maland had pulled over a car containing Youngblut and a companion, Felix Bauckholt. When he asked them to get out of the car, Youngblut drew a handgun and, at some point, fired twice, according to an affidavit from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Bauckholt also pulled a handgun, according to the ATF. Another Border Patrol agent fired back, and Maland and Bauckholt were both killed in the shootout.

Youngblut is in custody in New Hampshire, where she is being held without bail.

The guns carried by Youngblut and Bauckholt were both bought in February 2024, at a gun store in rural Vermont by Michelle Zajko, according to prosecutors. Zajko, at the time, purchased four handguns over two days, according to prosecutors.

Zajko is accused of listing a Vermont address, where she no longer lived, when she bought the guns.

The ATF affidavit says Zajko is a person of interest in the killing of her parents in the Philadelphia suburbs on New Year’s Eve 2022.

Police questioned Zajko both in Vermont and at a Pennsylvania hotel in the weeks after her parents killing. LaSota was also at the hotel and was arrested and charged with obstructing law enforcement after she refused to speak and kept her eyes closed.

Also in jail, on the other side of the country, is Maximilian Snyder, 22, Youngblut’s former high school classmate. Snyder and Youngblut filed for a marriage license in King County in November.

Snyder, of Kirkland, Washington, is charged with murder in the killing of Curtis Lind, an 82-year-old man in Vallejo, California. Lind was set to testify in an upcoming murder trial against two associates of LaSota who allegedly attacked Lind in 2022, leading to the death of a third associate. Prosecutors say Snyder stabbed Lind multiple times, explicitly to stop his testimony.

Snyder, in a video chat last week from jail, declined to comment and asked for help getting in touch with his family. His mother had called Kirkland police last month, asking them to check on him, unaware he had been arrested in California.

Prosecutors said LaSota, who went by the name “Ziz” online, was on the scene of the 2022 attack on Lind but was never arrested or charged.

LaSota reportedly fell off a sailboat in San Francisco Bay in 2022. A two-day Coast Guard search found no body and an online obituary was published. But just a few months later, prosecutors said, she was on the scene of the attack on Lind.

She is being held in Maryland on charges of trespassing, obstruction and possessing a handgun and is being held without bail.

Zajko is also being held in Maryland on charges of trespassing, obstruction, resisting arrest and possessing a handgun.

Also arrested alongside LaSota and Zajko was 26-year-old Daniel Blank. He was charged with two misdemeanors of trespassing and obstructing. The Washington Post reported that Blank is under investigation in the killing of Zajko’s parents.