A Texas woman has been accused of mailing homemade explosives to President Barack Obama and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) that could have maimed or killed them, according to documents filed in district court last week in Houston.
Julia Poff, 46, mailed the devices in October 2016, along with a third package that she sent to the Social Security Administration, according to the indictment. Of the three packages, only Abbott opened his. It did not detonate because “he did not open it as designed,” according to court documents.
Had the devices exploded, they would have caused “severe burns and death” to the politicians, who federal investigators believe Poff targeted for multiple reasons. She was known to dislike Obama, the investigators said, and was “upset with Greg Abbott” because “she had not received support from her ex-husband,” according to the documents. Poff had previously applied for Social Security benefits but was denied, the documents said.
Investigators traced the devices to Poff after examining several of their components, including a cigarette box and a salad dressing cap. The cigarettes were bought at a truck stop near Poff’s home in Brookshire, Tex., 30 miles west of Houston. The salad dressing was a brand Poff was known to have bought for an “anniversary dinner,” the indictment said.
Most tellingly, the court documents noted, hair belonging to one of Poff’s two cats was found under the address label of the package sent to Obama.
Poff has been charged with six counts, including mailing injurious articles and transporting explosives with the intent to kill and injure. She has also been charged with defrauding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food stamps, and falsely declaring bankruptcy — issues that came up during the course of the investigation.
According to Nathan Kalmoe, an assistant professor of political communication at Louisiana State University, who has studied political violence, an individual’s support for such acts is often influenced by both her personality and the political environment.
Yet another member of the Bundy militia is in trouble with the law again.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that 57-year-old William Keebler was arrested this week and charged with attempting to detonate a bomb at a Bureau of Land Management facility in Arizona.
Keebler, who took part in the 2014 standoff with federal land administrators near Cliven Bundy’s ranch, told undercover FBI agents that he planned to target a BLM building in Mount Trumbull, Ariz. The FBI agents, in turn, created a non-working explosive device for Keebler to use at the facility, which Keebler first started scouting as a target in October 2015.
Keebler planted the device at the BLM building on Tuesday and tried to detonate it, without luck. He was arrested the next day.
If convicted, Keebler could face between five to 20 years in federal prison.
I mentioned in my post on the racial attack on the Pretty Penny restaraunt that the hill and mountain country of the western side of Virginia had become home to a large number of white supremacist, militia, and christian identity groups. Some of the groups are neo-nazis, confederate hammerskins, and KKK in Central Virginia where Chesterfield County is. Which means a lot of recruiting on the Internet, and via the bars for little tow headed troglodytes to join.
And then there are the various confederate groups – which generally leave folks alone other than a few “rebel yells” in battlefield reenactments.
Here we have another group of Dylann Roof wannabes…Which need, once again to be tied to the rise in racist rhetoric of the right.
The FBI has arrested two men they say were plotting to bomb a church in order to start a “race war.”
Robert Doyle and Ronald Chaney “ascribe to a white supremacy version of the Asatru faith,” according to court documents. The FBI says Doyle held a meeting on September 27 at his Chesterfield home to discuss “shooting or bombing the occupants of black churches and Jewish synagogues.” The FBI says several vehicles were present at the home on that day, including one registered to Chaney.
According to the FBI, Doyle and Chaney met with an undercover agent posing as an illegal arms dealer on October 25. The two allegedly ordered “an automatic weapon, explosives, and a pistol with a silencer.”
On November 8, the FBI says Chaney met with the undercover agent to make the purchase, and was placed under arrest. Doyle was arrested later that day.
The FBI also says the two men were plotting to rob and kill a local jewelry store dealer with the help of a third suspect, Charles Daniel Halderman. The FBI says they recorded meetings where Doyle outlined the plan, which included robbing an armored car and attacking a gun store owner in Virginia, in order to “purchase land, stockpile weapons, and train for the coming race war.”
Halderman was arrested on November 8 and charged with conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery.
A Mississippi man was arrested on Sunday morning for allegedly throwing a bomb inside a Walmart just days after threatening the retail giant and other businesses for refusing to sell Confederate battle flags.
According to the Tupelo Daily Journal, 61-year-old Marshall W. Leonard will be charged with placing an explosive device after allegedly throwing it inside a local Walmart.
“There was an employee on break, and the suspect told him, ‘You better run,’ Police Chief Bart Aguirre said. “The employee did run and was away from harm when the package went off. It wasn’t a large explosion. It didn’t cause a lot of damage to the store.”
Leonard named Walmart and the Daily Journal as targets in an Oct. 28 post on the newspaper’s Facebook page.
“Journal corporate, you are on final warning,” he wrote Oct. 28. “You are part of the problem. As a result of this, y’all are going down, along with Walmart, WTVA, Reeds department store, and all the rest of the anti-American crooks. I’m not kidding. No messing around anymore!”
Leonard told WAPT-TV last month that the flag, which has been derided as a symbol of slavery and oppression, had nothing to do with race.
“Changing the state flag isn’t going to change nothing,” said Leonard, who opposed a bill that would remove the symbol from the Mississippi state flag. “There’s still always going to be hate. There will still always be racism.”
WTVA-TV reported that Leonard was kicked out of the Confederate flag advocacy group Mississippi On Guard in August after protesting at a Tupelo City Council meeting while being draped in the flag.
Most of us in the electronics business would recognize the above as a “project board”. You can buy these at the few still existing Radio Shacks or online and add electronic components to them to make a radio, a clock, or most anything you want confined to the capability of he device type…Including a Bomb timer.
What makes this a school project instead of a bomb, is the absence of something which goes “boom” like C4 or Semtex, which is pretty hard to come by by domestic or international terrorists inside the US…and virtually impossible to obtain as a High School kid. Which is a big part of the reason Timothy McVeigh used a fertilizer-oil (AMFO) bomb to blow up the Murrah Center, and the 9/11 terrorists…Used airplanes. The second reason this is a school project, is some of the little pieces on that green board are traceable to whomever purchased them.
Why someone should confuse the two things – a bomb and a kids electronic project, is an issue involving stereotypes and racism. Obviously this High School doesn’t offer any advanced college prep classes in Chemistry.
A Dallas-area teen with a knack for tinkering built a homemade clock for his engineering teachers. Ahmed Mohamed never expected the reaction he’d receive for his invention. The 14-year-old Irving ISD student was arrested.
Despite repeated explanations that the device is a clock and no proof of explosives, police could charge Mohamed “with making a hoax bomb,” the Dallas Morning News reported.
The event has caught the attention of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and ignited outrage on social media. A hashtag #IStandWithAhmed has began trending early Wednesday morning.
“I think this wouldn’t even be a question if his name wasn’t Ahmed Mohamed,” said Alia Salem, executive director of CAIR’s North Texas chapter, according to ABC affiliate WFAA. “He is an excited kid who is very bright and wants to share it with his teachers.”
A photo circulating on Twitter — of a slight student in a NASA T-shirt in handcuffs — appears to show the end of the incident that occurred Monday. The Dallas Morning News described Mohamed as a skilled engineer who can build “his own radios and repair his own go-kart.”
The freshman at MacArthur High School received a three day suspension. Police are investigating the case even though they acknowledge that the student had not made any references to a bomb. From the Morning News:
“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” [Police spokesman James] McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.”
Well, Ahmed, I have some sympathy for you borne out of personal experience. I built some rather powerful rockets back in my day, scrounging parts from junkyards and Edmund Scientific on my small allowance budget. Capable of launching well over 10,000 ft. Got arrested for trying to shoot down an airplane by a local rooter-tooter cop, because I launched my rocket 20 miles from an airport. Local reporter came to my defense and threatened a critical article…
Hope the Internet world hearing about your case has a positive result!
An upstate New York man who blew his leg off in his garage making improvised explosive devices will be held in federal custody without bail because law enforcement found white supremacist paraphernalia and believe he’s dangerous,WGRZ reports.
Michael O’Neill, 45, a former Niagara County corrections officer, is accused of making seven bombs and was arrested two weeks ago after one of the devices accidentally went off. O’Neill was rushed to a hospital where his leg had to be amputated. He was the only one injured, WGRZ reports.
“Luckily, he is detained,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Alsup told Time Warner Cable News. “He is no longer at large in the community with or without some of the physical disabilities he’s going to have going forward, but luckily for the community, he only hurt himself.”
Pictures of the KKK, Nazi imagery and the Confederate flag were found inside his home, which he lives in with his stepfather, William Ross, who chairs the Niagara County Legislature, WGRZ reports.
Even with his leg now missing, prosecutors believed it would be too risky for the public if O’Neill was released from custody.
The explosives he created contained nails and BB pellets, according to reports. One was labeled “powder with nails.”
His attorney said O’Neill was just planning to blow up some tree stumps.
“The fact that there were some items that we described in court as consistent with, white supremacists, to include the Ku Klux Klan, and the Nazi imagery, some of the verbiage which was particularly on the Nazi picture, also the Confederate battle flag, means that law enforcement has more work to go,” U.S. Attorney William Hochul told TWC News.
O’Neill will remain in the custody of the U.S. Marshalls while he recuperates, then will be transferred to a detention facility.
After the explosion, a neighbor told local WKBW that O’Neill spend hours on end
“We only know that we see him at night, in the middle of the night, all hours of the night, all seasons, just out in the garage, out in the back yard,” the neighbor told the station.
Ross told reporter he didn’t know what O’Neill was doing and if he did, he would have alerted authorities.
Anyway, in the never-ending search to prevent folks from coming up with even more ingenious ways to sneak something they are not supposed to, onto a plane…
You have to ask yourself – why Cong. Pete King didn’t want to talk about the “other terrorists” in his hearings yesterday on “Muslim terrorism”…
Just another Tea Party Terrorist… Indeed.
In the event you think this scumbag was only targeting black folks – look at the mixed group of people at the Spokane Parade… And the number of little children in the video below.
Why are these guys a bigger threat? Because, you let a swarthy Middle Eastern dude with a beard walk into your average NRA Member owned gun shop, and ask for a pair of Glocks with spare 30 round clips…
That owner is 1) going to do a real background check, and 2) place his very first call ever to the FBI. And that’s if the owner doesn’t pull a gun on him, and hold him for the authorities.
Gomer here to the left, can walk in to the same gun shop, buy a pair of semi-automatic assault rifles, extended 45 round clips, the Glocks and clips…
And get free instruction and a kit on how to convert the rifles to full automatic, and directions on where he can but armor piercing rounds – because he’s one of “the boys”.
Fortunately, there aren’t too many of these all-American scumbags walking around… Just enough for 2-3 Mass Murders a year.
And how many times has the US been attacked by Middle-Eastern Terrorists since 9/11, again?
The man arrested today in connection with the attempted Martin Luther King Day parade bombing in Spokane, Washington, appears to have longtime connections to the white supremacist movement. Read the rest of this entry »
While police believe the bomber is a member of a white supremacist group, they have as of yet produced evidence or a motive in the arrest. Hard to tell at this point whether this guy acted alone, is a member of a white supremacist group such as the Aryan Nations or is another Tea Party whack job. Police and bomb experts are currently searching the accused home for clues…
A suspect has been arrested in the foiled bombing of a Martin Luther King parade in this city last January, federal officials said Wednesday.
NBC station KHQ TV of Spokane reported that FBI vehicles converged on a home about 75 miles north of Spokane. Viewers told the station that the house was near U.S. 395 south of Colville, Wash.
The Seattle Times reported that an FBI source said one man was arrested and federal agents were preparing to search the house. The newspaper reported that the source said the man was believed to be affiliated with white supremacists.
The Times said the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Spokane was expected to release more detail Wednesday.
The bomb had a remote detonator and the ability to cause mass casualties, according to officials.
The bomb was defused without incident but unnerved residents of Spokane, especially those who took part in a parade whose theme was steeped in peace and nonviolence.
The attempt raised the possibility of a racial motive in a region that has been home to the white supremacist group Aryan Nations.
The bomb could have caused dozens of casualties, and was particularly nasty –
Many rat poisons contain the chemical warfarin, an anticoagulant. There have been media reports that some suicide bombers in the Middle East pack their bombs with rat poison in hopes of making them more lethal.
“I think the connection is virtually inescapable… that the device was planted and left there to target the marchers or bystanders,” Frank Harrill, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Spokane office, said late Tuesday.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 15 different “hate groups” operate in Washington state and six others just over the border in Idaho — including the white supremacist group Aryan Nations. The FBI said the men or women responsible are being considered “armed and dangerous.”
Whatever the motive, Spokane mayor Mary Verner said the attempted bombing was “unacceptable.”
“I was struck that on a day when we celebrate Dr. King, a champion of non-violence, we were faced with a significant violent threat,” Verner said Tuesday. “This is unacceptable in our community, or any community.”
Just half an hour before the Martin Luther King Day parade was scheduled to begin Monday, three workers spotted a suspicious package with visible wires on a bench, the FBI said.
Authorities rerouted the parade while officers from the Spokane Police Department‘s bomb disposal unit worked on the bomb.
“I saw the robot and when I saw the robot I told my girls to run and ‘Let’s get out of here,'” witness Lisa Ludeman told ABC News.
Harrill, the supervisory senior resident agent in Spokane, told ABC News that the backpack was “a viable device.”
“The potential for lethality was clear,” Harrill said Tuesday. The local bomb squad neutralized the device, he added.
There has been no release of evidence of who, what, or why yet…
The bomb, described as a small pipe bomb, was designed to be triggered by a radio frequency system, and was directional – meaning it was designed to spray its deadly shrapnel in the direction it was pointed, law enforcement sources said. Aimed at the parade route, it could have caused multiple casualties among the marchers
The FBI is asking the public for help in the investigation of an unexploded backpack bomb left along the parade route of a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday celebration in Spokane, Washington, the agency said on Tuesday.
The unattended Swiss Army-brand backpack, with wires visible, was discovered on a downtown bench by three city workers who notified police of the device about 30 minutes before the parade was scheduled to begin.
The parade, attended by about 1,500 people, was quickly rerouted while city’s bomb disposal unit was summoned and safely “neutralized the device,” the FBI said.
FBI agent Frank Harrill described the “improvised explosive device” as having a “very lethal design” capable of inflicting “multiple casualties.”
The device in the backpack was largely concealed by two T-shirts packed inside. The exact design and suspected strength of the bomb were not revealed.
The FBI offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any individuals responsible for the bomb. Investigators also asked anyone who took photographs or video footage in the area where the pack was found during a three-hour period before the parade to contact the FBI.
Texas woman has been accused of mailing homemade explosives to President Barack Obama and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) that could have maimed or killed them, according to documents filed in district court last week in Houston.
ent was arrested.
You have to ask yourself – why Cong. Pete King didn’t want to talk about the “other terrorists” in his hearings yesterday on “Muslim terrorism”…
Backpack bomb found on Spokane, Washington, parade route
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