Wrongfully arrested man files malicious prosecution lawsuit against McLennan County, detective

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - A Utah man wrongfully arrested last year on allegations he threatened a shooting at an Axtell school in an attempt to exploit a minor has filed a false arrest and malicious prosecution lawsuit against McLennan County and the detective on the case.

Kyle Nielsen, 32, of Sandy, Utah, is seeking unspecified monetary damages in his lawsuit, filed Friday in Waco’s U.S. District Court against McLennan County and Sheriff’s Office Investigator Derek Russell.

Nielsen was arrested during a police raid at his home in January 2024 on a third-degree felony terroristic threat against a public school charge. He remained free on $200,000 bond until the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office acknowledged in June 2025 that he wrongfully was arrested and dismissed the charge.

Waco attorney Mike Dixon, who represents the county, declined comment on the lawsuit Monday. McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara and Russell did not respond to phone messages on Monday.

“This shocking case arises from the wrongful arrest of a completely innocent man who was then extradited halfway across the country and had his reputation permanently and publicly tarnished by false accusations of ‘sextortion,’ ‘terroristic threats,’ and soliciting explicit materials from minors through Snapchat,” the lawsuit, filed by Dallas attorneys Don Tittle and Clint Broden, alleges.

“It would never have occurred but for a grossly incompetent pseudo-investigation by Defendant Derek Russell, which he compounded by flagrantly and repeatedly misrepresenting the facts of the case in multiple warrants,” according to the lawsuit.

District Attorney Josh Tetens told KWTX when he dismissed the case “that is exactly how the system is supposed to work.”

“All initial information led to the arrest and indictment of Mr. Nielsen, and thanks to further investigative efforts by both parties, evidence confirmed he was not the perpetrator,” Tetens said.

Broden disagrees.

“Here is a news flash: this is exactly how the system is NOT supposed to work in America, and the filing of this lawsuit should make this clear to the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office,” Broden said Monday.

“Meanwhile, the McLennan County sheriff has refused to pursue the true perpetrator in British Columbia, leaving him free to continue to commit horrible offenses against teenaged girls in McLennan County and denying justice to the victims in this particular case,” Broden said. “Another news flash: the job of the McLennan County sheriff is to make the community more safe and NOT less safe,” Broden said.

Tittle said it should have been obvious early on that Nielsen was innocent.

“Anyone looking at the evidence for 10 minutes should have been able to tell that the actual perpetrator lives in Canada and that Kyle Nielson had nothing to do with this. Sadly, an arrest like this is always front-page news, but the ‘oops we arrested the wrong guy’ story never gets the same amount of attention. We hope to correct that. For Kyle to be wrongfully arrested and charged with sexual stalking of minors has been devastating to his reputation and ability to earn a living,” Tittle said.

According to the sworn affidavit that led to Nielsen’s arrest, the sheriff’s office began investigating the case on Jan. 24, 2024, after reported threats were made against two Axtell students and the school via the social media platform Snapchat.

The first alleged victim told investigators she was chatting with someone, who later was wrongfully identified as Nielsen, and that person said he knew the second victim and said, “Good, because I’m going to her school,” the affidavit alleged.

The context of the messages was not provided by Russell, the sheriff’s office investigator who wrote the criminal complaint.

When the first victim told the person she was going to alert the principal and other school officials that he planned to go to the school, the person replied, “Go ahead. It won’t matter a month from now.” Again, context was not provided in the affidavit, but Russell wrote that the first victim asked the man “why are you bringing a gun?” The man erroneously identified as Nielsen, replied, “When I actually show up to see her. Obviously, I’m not going to show up when they are expecting me.”

Through an investigation, “deputies found Nielsen made threats of violence in an attempt to exploit a minor,” the sheriff’s office wrote in a news release.

Authorities did not explain how or why they thought Nielsen was trying to exploit a minor.

Deputies worked with the FBI, and using the address and phone number linked to the Snapchat account that made the threats, learned the Snapchat account was being used by Nielsen, the affidavit alleged.

Broden, however, said in January that the “subsequent investigation” to which authorities refer “in fact was solely as a result of an investigation by Mr. Nielsen’s defense team that authorities eventually admitted that Nielsen was absolutely innocent.” The defense team included private investigator Haywood Sawyer.

Nielsen, 31, was as senior project manager in the renewable energy field for 10 years but was fired after his arrest.

The lawsuit alleges the victims in the case provided three Snapchat user names to Russell, which had “obviously been used by the actual perpetrator.”

“Despite receiving information from Snapchat regarding these accounts – information that confirmed they were all used by the same person – Russell inexplicably ignored this, instead targeting the innocent user of a fourth Snapchat account that was never identified by the victims and did not appear in any criminal activity on Snapchat and had no identifying information in common with the three accounts known to have been used by the perpetrator,” the lawsuit alleges.

“In other words, no reasonable officer would believe that this fourth account – which belonged to Plaintiff Kyle Nielsen – had anything to do with the crime,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also alleges Russell lied in arrest and search warrant affidavits, charging without evidence that the fourth user was the same user behind the other accounts known to be involved and falsely claiming that one of the victims identified a Facebook photo of Nielsen as the perpetrator.

“This appears to have been an effort to cover up his extraordinarily flawed conclusion that Plaintiff was the perpetrator and user behind all four accounts,” the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit states that Nielsen’s defense team traced the email address and IP addresses attached to two of the perpetrator’s known Snapchat accounts to someone in Canada.

“It has long been established that lying in affidavits such as these violates a person’s Fourth Amendment right against being subjected to seizure without a good faith showing of probable cause,” the lawsuit alleges. “The harm Russell caused Mr. Nielsen can never ben fully repaired, but he certainly deserves redress for these flagrant violations of his rights…”

The lawsuit also alleges that despite their public admission that Nielsen was wrongfully arrested and that an “error” was made, “Sheriff Parnell McNamara and the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office failed to conduct any meaningful investigation into why Russell had reached such an erroneous conclusion in the face of Snapchat information clearly indicating that Plaintiff was not the perpetrator.”

“Likewise, the Sheriff’s Department and McNamara have neither investigated nor disciplined Russell for the numerous factual misrepresentations he swore to in various affidavits related to Plaintiff’s arrest,” the lawsuit alleges.

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