An Indiana “satirist” has been arrested after writing a Facebook post threatening to kill several local law enforcement officials and blow up a courthouse. The idiot-in-question also claims ties to his two fellow idiots who shot two cops and a civilian in Vegas a few weeks ago.
A 22-year-old Indiana man is facing both state and federal charges after allegedly posting a rambling message on Facebook in which he claimed ties to Las Vegas cop killers Jerad and Amanda Miller, made death threats against state judges and law enforcement officers, and warned that a local courthouse would be “blown to pieces within the month” — before claiming that it had all been written as satire.
In federal charges unsealed Monday, Samuel Bradbury, of Pine Village, Ind., was accused of using interstate communications to make threats and willfully threatening to use explosives. That’s in addition to four Class C felony intimidation charges Bradbury faces in state court. Bradbury could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison if convicted on the federal charges alone.
According to an FBI affidavit written in support of the federal charges, Bradbury posted threats to kill West Lafayette, Ind. police officer Troy Greene, Tippecanoe County Sheriff Tracy Brown, Tippecanoe County Judge Les Meade, and Indiana Supreme Court Loretta Rush on Facebook on June 19…
“Before the month is over, we intend to incinerate and destroy no less than 6 police cars, as well as the Tippecanoe County Courthouse, with hits specifically targeted on Judge Les Meade and Judge Loretta Rush also,” he wrote. “The courthouse will be blown to pieces within the month, we have agents operating all over the city, and some all over the country.”
Police in West Lafayette got a tip about the post on June 21, and, that night, they executed a search warrant at Bradbury’s house. According to the affidavit, officers searching Bradbury’s room found three 115 gram bags of aluminum powder and three 345 gram bags of black iron oxide — both substances used to make thermite. They also found several poems written in notebooks where cop killing was a theme, portions of which were reprinted in the affidavit…
During the search, police were also able to access Facebook posts Bradbury wrote in response to people who had commented about his original rant.
“Just to let everyone know: this is complete satire and an exercise of whether or not free speech still exists in America,” he wrote. “This post uses real names, but everything else is fake.”
Satire…you keep using that word. And the bomb-making material in the house was all part of this “satire.”
His mistake was he threatened cops and called it a joke instead of threatening women and calling it a joke.
Yeah, I don’t recall Swift keeping “how to cook babies” books or a special baby-filleting knife in his house. If he had, I doubt he’d be known as a satirist, more like a strange almost-murderer.
@1 – true. Which leads to the inevitable question – if he threatens a woman cop, is there some kind of paradox explosion? :)
“Hey, all those shells we fired at Fort Sumter? Totally just kidding, dudes.” — signed, S.C. CSA officials, 1865
the bomb-making material in the house was all part of this “satire.”
Nah, that was “performance art”
Or perhaps it was just that he was complying with his sincerely held religious beliefs.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the next actual bomber put on trial claim that the explosions were satirical.
No; in the case of women with power/guns, there is greater support than women without power/guns, but less so than for men with power/guns.
I know it was a joke, but find it too depressing to laugh at.
Hey, what about his First Amendment right to own bomb-building material?
Hey, what about his First Amendment right to own bomb-building material?
No, that’s his Second Amendment right. After all, it merely says there is a right to own and bear “arms” and bombs were certainly considered arms back when the amendment was adopted.
I hate to be the pedant here, but thermite isn’t really a bomb material. If that’s all this guy had, he wasn’t making explosives. Thermite is a mixture of powdered aluminum and iron oxides which burns very, very hot, enough to melt steel. It has a fairly high activation energy, so it’s somewhat difficult to ignite, but once it gets going it can’t be extinguished by cutting it off from atmospheric oxygen, since it is its own oxidizer.
What it doesn’t do is explode. In fact, it’s so not-explosive that sometimes it’s used for welding. He was probably intending to carry out his threat to “incinerate and destroy” cop cars with the thermite. A cupful of thermite set on fire on the hood of a car can burn/melt right through the hood and engine block. There are plenty of youtube videos of people doing this to old junkers.
Thermite isn’t illegal. It would be almost impossible to ban it in any effective way, since the only things you need to make it are supplies of aluminum and iron metal, and some method of grinding each into a fine powder.
according to my back-of-a-envelope calculation he had only about half as much aluminium as is required to make thermite* reaction.
‘Satirist’ and ‘super genius’, how could anyone resist? @@
Dingo
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* 8Al + 3(Fe3O4) => 4(Al2O3) + 9Fe
Thermite is not an explosive.
The manufacturing of, possession of (or it’s ingredients), transportation of (except on civil aircraft), and usage of (within the limits of applicable arson laws) thermite is perfectly legal.
OK, thermite might be legal, but he wrote POEMS!
Next we’ll find out that he used sarcasm.
” He used… sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, pathos, puns, parody, litotes and… satire.”
From an EOD perspective, thermite is very troubling in this sort of situation. When we’d do house searches for explosive material and found thermite (or the makings of) inevitably we’d find more traditional bomb making supplies. Thermite is easy to make, so it’s often something aspiring bomb makers play with first before moving on to more complicated substances. Given the specific threats he’d made, finding thermite is a bad sign.
I happen to live in this area just south of Tippecanoe County. It’s interesting that he made threats against Tippecanoe County officials because Pine Village is in Warren County. Pine Village is a very small community full of people who marry their sisters. This young man is considered to be mentally disturbed but dangerous. He has been denied bail and will spend his time in jail until his trial.
Anyone who has seen the Tippecanoe County Courthouse in Lafayette realizes that it would require a very, very large explosive device in order to destroy it. The building is huge and has very tight security.