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UNITED STATES ATTORNEY'S OFFICE ALEXANDRIA NEWPORT NEWS NORFOLK RICHMOND CHUCK ROSENBERG, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY |
| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Jim Rybicki Public Information Officer Phone: (703) 842-4050 Fax: (703) 549-5202 E-Mail: usavae.press@usdoj.gov Website: www.usdoj.gov/usao/vae |
March 15, 2007 Further Information Contact: |
Life in Prison for Mailing Explosive Device to Richmond Federal Courthouse
(Richmond, VA) – Rodney Curtis Hamrick, age 41, pleaded guilty today to Use of a Destructive Device in an Attempted Crime of Violence, after having been previously convicted of the same offense in 1992. The more recent charge is related to the October 2005 mailing of an explosive device and a powdery substance labeled “Anthrax” to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals located in the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. United States Courthouse, in Richmond, Virginia. Immediately after his plea of guilty, Hamrick was sentenced by United States District Judge Henry Hudson to life in prison, without the possibility of parole. Chuck Rosenberg, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, announced the plea and sentence.
At the time of the offense, Hamrick was incarcerated at a federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, when he obtained the necessary ingredients to assemble an improvised explosive device. Hamrick placed the device in a manila envelope and mailed it from prison to the Clerk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Virginia. On October 24, 2005, the envelope containing the improvised explosive device was discovered by Richmond Federal Court Security Officers (“CSOs”), who x-ray incoming mail. After CSOs identified the contents of the envelope, the Richmond Police Department Bomb Squad responded and used a water cannon to defuse device. The device was then sent to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF) laboratory for analysis, where an ATF expert concluded it was a functional explosive bomb. Hamrick was previously convicted in the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia in January 1992 of a similar offense, having mailed a similar device to a United States Attorney.
The investigation was conducted by the United States Postal Inspection Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Richmond Police Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant United States Attorney N. George Metcalf and Jerome J. Teresinksi, Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Counterterrorism Section, prosecuted the case for the United States.