Daily News, Bowling Green, Oct. 17, 2015
Bomb case in federal court
Friend said teen talked about blowing up school
By Justin Story
A criminal complaint has been filed in federal court against a Simpson County teenager suspected of amassing homemade explosive devices as part of a plot to blow up Franklin-Simpson Middle School.
Trey Alexander Gwathney-Law, 18, of Franklin, is accused in the criminal complaint of manufacturing and possessing five unregistered destructive devices.
The complaint and a supporting affidavit were filed in U.S. District Court in Bowling Green by Special Agent David Hayes of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Gwathney-Law was arrested Sept. 27 after a friend, William Creek, contacted the Franklin Police Department to report that Gwathney-Law possessed several explosive devices and had made comments about using them to blow up the middle school.
Creek said Gwathney-Law had talked about blowing up the facility since he was a juvenile. This time, Gwathney-Law said he was serious about his plot, according to court records, and Creek reported the devices were inside an old stove in a shed behind Gwathney-Law’s house.
Creek told the Daily News in a previous interview that Gwathney-Law had been badly bullied in school.
Franklin police responded to the house, where Gwathney-Law denied making threats or possessing any explosive devices.
After obtaining consent from Gwathney-Law and his mother to search the shed behind their residence, police opened the stove there and found four glass soda bottles with cloth rags sticking out of them.
A fifth soda bottle in the stove had a green fuse attached to the opening and appeared to have been sealed with a substance that had been melted onto the bottle.
“All of the bottles were filled with a dark liquid,” Hayes stated in the complaint. “(FPD) Lt. (Dale) Adams stated he detected a strong odor of gasoline after opening the stove door.”
Hayes said in the complaint that the four bottles with cloth wicks are “commonly referred to as Molotov cocktails.”
The bottle with the green pyrotechnic fuse contained a silver CO2 cartridge in the top of the bottle, just under the fuse, according to the complaint.
“This device is referred to as an improvised explosive/incendiary device,” Hayes stated. “This device also had a gasoline odor.”
Gwathney-Law said the bottles contained only oil and he was just storing them, according to the criminal complaint. He also denied any knowledge of the glass bottle with the fuse.
Adams contacted the ATF, which took custody of the five bottles and examined them.
Samples of the liquid taken from each bottle were analyzed, with the liquid shown to be “consistent with an oil/gasoline mixture,” according to the complaint.
The suspected improvised explosive device was dismantled. The metal CO2 cartridge in that bottle was found to contain explosive powder, and a small commercial pyrotechnic device had been placed inside the open end of the cartridge so that it protruded from the opening of the bottle.
Investigators found two empty CO2 cartridges and three empty shotgun shells in the area of the stove, with Hayes noting in the complaint that the shotgun shells had been manually taken apart.
Officers were given consent to search the residence, finding CO2 cartridges in Gwathney-Law’s bedroom, along with 27 additional empty shotgun shells and two glass bottles that appeared to contain the pellets from the empty shells, the complaint stated. Officers also found an empty tube of epoxy, six full CO2 cartridges, nine empty CO2 cartridges and one glass soda bottle stuffed with a cloth rag in the bedroom, according to the complaint.
In federal court, a criminal complaint is a document signed by a U.S. magistrate judge so that someone can be taken into custody prior to a federal indictment that formally charges that person with a crime.