Washington, D.C., police arrested a man with at least 200 explosives in a tent outside the Red Mass held annually to mark the beginning of the Supreme Court's term.
Louis Geri, 41, was in possession of bottle rockets and Molotov cocktails when he was arrested on the steps of St. Matthew's Cathedral on Sunday, The Washington Post reported.
Geri, from Vineland, New Jersey, faces eight charges, including manufacture or possession of a weapon of mass destruction in furtherance of a hate crime.
Although several Supreme Court members usually attend the Mass, no justices appeared due to security concerns, National Catholic Reporter reported.
Court records filed in D.C. Superior Court showed that Geri, during his arrest, threatened to ignite explosives and handed authorities notebook pages that expressed animosity toward the Catholic Church, Supreme Court justices, members of the Jewish faith, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Post reported.
The court filing said that when D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officers asked Geri to leave, he told them, "You might want to stay back and call the federales, I have explosives."
An officer notified a sergeant with the bomb squad, and the sergeant told Geri he had to move because there was an event.
The suspect then said he knew about the event and continued to insist he had bombs, the Post reported.
"Do you want me to throw one out, I'll test one out on the streets? I have 100-plus of them," Geri 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."
After being told police officers were going to forcefully remove him if he did not leave, Geri said, "Several of your people are gonna die from one of these," the court records said.
Trying to deescalate the situation, the sergeant agreed to read what Geri had written on nine pages torn out from his notebook titled "Written Negotiations for the Avoidance of Destruction of Property via Detonation of Explosives."
As discussion ensued, Geri began pulling out multiple capped vials containing yellow liquid with illegal explosive devices taped to them and told police to step away.
After officers formed a perimeter, Geri left his tent and approached nearby trees to urinate. That's when the sergeant and another officer stopped Geri and, after a brief tussle, put him in handcuffs.
Authorities later determined 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, the Post reported.
Geri was arraigned in court Monday on two charges — possession of a destructive device and false report of a weapon of mass destruction — connected to an incident at the church last month after which he was barred from the property.
A judge ordered him held without bond.