WASHINGTON (7News) — More than 200 destructive devices were found inside the tent of a New Jersey man set up on the steps of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Northwest D.C. Sunday, hours before hundreds gathered for the annual Red Mass signaling the start of the new Supreme Court session, according to court documents.
The handmade devices found inside the tent appeared to be “fully functional,” and parts intended to be converted into a destructive device were also found, according to court documents.
Louis Geri, 41, was arrested. He described the devices as grenades and planned to use modified bottle rockets to detonate them from a distance, according to documents.
PREVIOUS | New Jersey man found with possible explosives outside St. Matthew’s Cathedral in DC
D.C. police were clearing the area around the church when they said they found Geri inside a green tent at around 6 a.m. Police said they later learned the man had been barred from the church property on Sept. 26.
Officers responding to the scene said Geri warned them several times that he had explosives and threatened to throw one to prove it.
“Do you want me to throw one out? I’ll test one out in the street. I have a hundred plus of them,” Geri told a D.C. police officer and a bomb squad sergeant, records show “If you just step back, I’ll throw one in the street, no one will get hurt, there will be a hole in the street… 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.”
After police warned him they would be removed, Geri told them “…several of your people are going to die from one of these,” police said.
To de-escalate the situation, officers agreed to read a nine-page letter from Geri’s notebook, titled “Written Negotiations for the Avoidance of Destruction of Property via Detonation of Explosives,” which showed animosity towards the members of the Supreme Court, the Catholic Church, members of the Jewish faith, and ICE/ICE facilities, according to police documents.
Geri, police said, got agitated shortly after the bomb squad sergeant unzipped the tent flap and clenched onto a butane lighter and an unknown “white-capped, shaped object.” After acknowledging that he wrote the letter, he began pulling out multiple vials of unknown yellow liquid and issued another threat to light the devices if officers didn’t step away.
Not long after they backed off, officers spotted Geri step towards a tree and arrested him.
Some of the vials, police later learned, contained nitromethane, a highly dangerous fuel used in some race cars. Other chemicals were also found in some vials.
After the incident, no Supreme Court justices attended the mass, according to the Catholic Standard, a newspaper operated by the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
