A New Jersey man found with over 200 homemade explosives threatened to blow up a Catholic church in Washington, D.C. where Supreme Court justices were set to attend a mass on Sunday, court records show.
Police were able to thwart the attack and said the man, identified as Louis Geri from Vineland, had modified bottle rockets and Molotov cocktails that were ‘fully functional’.
He was also discovered to have writings that expressed ‘significant animosity’ toward the Catholic church, Jews, Supreme Court justices, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and ICE facilities, according to police.
None of the nine members of the Supreme Court attended the service at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle due to security concerns, reported the Catholic Standard, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
As seen in pictures, Geri allegedly set up a green tent on the steps of the church ahead of the Red Mass, an annual service that honors those in the legal profession and marks the start of the new Supreme Court term.
Officers with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department tasked with clearing the entire block for the event confronted Geri, 41, and told him to move his tent, according to an affidavit.
In response, Geri refused and allegedly said: ‘You might want to stay back and call the federales, I have explosives.’
After an officer called over a sergeant with the bomb squad, Geri said he was aware of the Red Mass before issuing another threat, according to court records.
Louis Geri, of New Jersey, is accused of having more than 200 explosive devices outside a Catholic church in Washington, D.C. that Supreme Court justices were scheduled to be attending
Pictured: The tent on the steps of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle was set up by Geri, according to police, who also said he wrote a manifesto that contained hate for the Catholic church, Jews, Supreme Court justices and Immigration and Customs Enforcement
‘Do you want me to throw one out, I’ll test one out in the street? I have a hundred plus of them. 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,’ Geri said to the two officers, per 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,’ he allegedly continued.
When the officers said he would be removed against his will, Geri said ‘several of your people are gonna die from one of these’, the affidavit said.
The sergeant tried to deescalate from there by offering to read what Geri had written.
She unzipped the tent flap, and he handed her nine pages torn from a notebook that was titled ‘Written Negotiations for the Avoidance of Destruction of Property via Detonation of Explosives’, court records stated.
While this was all happening, the sergeant said she saw that Geri was holding a butane lighter and an ‘unknown white-capped shaped object’.
She unzipped the flap all the way, which angered Geri, who reached into a dark bag and pulled out multiple capped vials containing yellow liquid. The vials also had explosive devices taped to them, according to the affidavit.
Geri said he was the sole author of the pages he had handed the sergeant and then threatened to ignite the vials with his butane lighter, per the affidavit.
‘You better have these people step away or there’s going to be deaths, I’m telling you now!’ he said, according to the officers’ account.
At this point, the sergeant ordered officers to go back up to the perimeter that had already been established around the church, court records show.
Eventually, Geri left the tent to go to urinate near some trees at the corner of the church, allowing three officers to subdue him and put him in handcuffs.
None of the Supreme Court Justices attended the Red Mass on Sunday due to security concerns (From L-R: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan)
Pictured: The Cathedral of St. Matthew, where Geri was tackled and arrested. He now faces eight charges including the manufacture or possession of weapon of mass destruction with a hate crime enhancement
A bomb squad technician found an explosive device in his pocket along with a butane lighter, according to police.
His hundreds of makeshift bombs were taken to the FBI for processing, after which authorities determined that some of the vials he had contained nitromethane.
Nitromethane is primarily used as racing or rocket fuel, but amateur bombers frequently adapt the substance for use in improvised explosives.
Timothy McVeigh used the compound in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people inside a federal building.
Geri described his explosives as grenades that used a rubber band to secure the detonation fuse, according to court records.
He also had modified bottle rockets with aluminum foil heads that were attached and treated with an explosive solution, allowing him to detonate his bombs from a distance, court records said.
Experts who saw these devices said they ‘appeared to be fully functional’.
Geri faces eight charges in connection to this incident, including the manufacture or possession of weapon of mass destruction with a hate crime enhancement. That charge alone could send him to prison for 30 years if convicted.
Geri was arraigned on Monday for charges related to a September 26 incident where he again camped on the steps of the church and was barred from the premises.
He is being held without bond and is scheduled to appear in court again for the latest slew of charges against him on Thursday morning.
The Daily Mail approached Geri’s attorney, Amanda Epstein, for comment.
