Who is Louis Geri? NJ man threatened to explode tent with 200 explosives outside DC church, chilling notebook seized
Louis Geri, 41, was detained outside a Washington, DC church with over 200 explosives and a notebook denouncing ICE and Supreme Court justices.
A maniac New Jersey man who was detained ahead of Red Mass in Washington, DC, possessed at least 200 explosives in a tent outside, along with a notebook in which he expressed his disgust for ICE and the justices of the Supreme Court who were scheduled to visit the Catholic church, as per court documents.
According to a document obtained by the Washington Post, Louis Geri, 41, set up his tent on the staircase of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. When police confronted him, he reportedly said, “You might want to stay back and call the federales, I have explosives.”
Chilling notepad seized
He allegedly gave investigators a notepad in which he expressed hatred for the Catholic Church, justices of the Supreme Court, Jews, and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as per the document.
When police found improvised explosives inside Geri's green tent on the site, the church was getting ready to conduct its yearly Red Mass, which signifies the start of the Supreme Court's term.
According to the Catholic Standard, an official publication of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, a number of justices of the Supreme Court usually join the service, but they chose to stay away as the security concern developed.
Louis Geri's encounter with police
Geri declined to leave the tent and kept telling police he had explosives, therefore the Metropolitan Police Department contacted the bomb squad, as per the Washington Post.
He asked the law enforcement officer, "Do you want me to throw one out, I'll test one out on the streets?" He also mentioned that he had "hundred-plus" explosives.
Geri is said to have threatened that "several of your people are gonna die from one of these" when they informed him that they would use force to remove him.
To defuse the situation, Geri handed over a notebook -- titled ‘Written Negotiations for the Avoidance of Destruction of Property via Detonation of Explosives’ -- via a flap in the tent, and an officer consented to read what Geri had written in it.
After removing several sealed bottles filled with yellow liquid that had explosives attached to them, he warned the officer to “step away or there's going to be deaths.”
He was arrested after a brief scuffle as he exited the tent to urinate on some trees.
The bomb squad seized his large collection of devices and sent them over to the FBI for testing.
