Worshippers leave after last year's Red Mass at the Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle in DC. Photo / Astrid Riecken, for The Washington Post
A man had more than 200 handmade destructive devices – including bottle rockets and Molotov cocktails – in a tent on the steps of a Washington DC cathedral where Supreme Court justices were expected to attend Mass, court records show.
During his arrest, Louis Geri threatened to ignite explosives and handed authorities pages of his notebook that, according to court records, expressed animosity towards the Catholic Church, Supreme Court justices, members of the Jewish faith, and United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
DC police first approached Geri inside a green tent posted on the top of the stairs leading to St Matthew’s Cathedral as they cleared the block for Red Mass – an annual religious service marking the start of a new Supreme Court term and honouring the judiciary.
Records filed in DC Superior Court today show that when officers asked Geri to leave, he told them, “You might want to stay back and call the federales, I have explosives”. A lawyer for Geri did not immediately respond to a request for comment today.
Normally, several justices of the court attend the Mass, but the incident apparently prevented them from doing so on Sunday local time.
“As the security situation unfolded, none of the justices attended this year’s Mass,” said an account in the Catholic Standard, the official newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
The officer called over a sergeant with the bomb squad, court records show, who told Geri he had to move because there was an event. Geri – 41, of Vineland, New Jersey – said he knew about the event and continued to insist he had bombs.
“Do you want me to throw one out, I’ll test one out on the streets? I have a hundred-plus of them,” he told the sergeant, according to court records.
“If you just step back, I’ll take out that tree. No one will get hurt, there will just be a hole where that tree used to be.”
When officers told Geri they were going to forcefully remove him if he did not leave, court documents show he responded by telling police that “several of your people are gonna die from one of these”.
In an attempt to de-escalate, the sergeant agreed to read what Geri had written down.
Geri unzipped the flap of the tent and handed over nine pages torn out from his notebook titled “Written Negotiations for the Avoidance of Destruction of Property via Detonation of Explosives”.
As he passed her the paperwork, court records show, the sergeant noticed that Geri had a butane lighter and an unknown white cap-shaped object in his hand. She unzipped the rest of the flap, court records show, which angered Geri.
He began reaching into a dark bag, according to court documents, and told her “All right, if you want to do it, we’ll do it now”.
The sergeant continued to ask him questions and he continued to answer, telling her he was the only one who wrote the “negotiations” he handed her and that he had a background in explosives.
But as he spoke, court records show, he began pulling out multiple capped vials containing yellow liquid with illegal explosive devices taped to them. He hovered his right thumb over the top of the butane lighter, posed to ignite it, and said “you better have these people step away or there’s going to be deaths, I’m telling you now”.
The sergeant told surrounding officers to back up and notified command staff.
As officers formed a perimeter, court records show, Geri left his tent and walked over to trees near the corner of the church to urinate. The sergeant and another officer stopped him and put him in handcuffs as he wrestled to get away.
Geri told them he had an explosive device in the front pocket of his fleece. A DC police bomb squad technician searched him and found an explosive in his pocket along with a butane lighter.
Geri was arrested, while the hundreds of devices and the rest of his belongings were taken to the FBI for processing.
Authorities determined that some of the vials contained nitromethane – an explosive compound often used in improvised explosive devices, including the ones deployed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people.
Geri described them to authorities as grenades that use rubber bands to secure the fuse, court records show. Others were modified bottle rockets with aluminium foil heads and treated in a pyrotechnic solution, records show. Authorities said in court documents that the devices appeared “fully functional”.
Court records show Geri faces eight charges in connection to the incident on Sunday local time, including manufacture or possession of a weapon of mass destruction in furtherance of a hate crime.
He was arraigned in court today on two charges connected to an incident at the church last month after which he was barred from the property: possession of a destructive device and false report of a weapon of mass destruction. A judge ordered him held without bond.
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