Border Militia Member Had Ammonium Nitrate, Thousands of Rounds of Ammunition in Hotel Room
Xenophobic militia guy and ammonium nitrate — where have I seen that before?
By Staff Sergeant Preston Chasteen [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsAgents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who searched Massey’s hotel room in Brownsville after an Oct. 20 arrest, found an AK-47 with six loaded magazines, a loaded handgun, a ballistic helmet and several cameras, as well as the ammunition box filled with suspected ammonium nitrate and fuel, according to court documents obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.
Ammonium nitrate can be a powerful explosive under certain circumstances: a stockpile of the substance at a fertilizer plant in West caused the deadly April 17 explosion that killed 15 people and injured more than 160 others. It’s also the substance used by Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
Massey was arrested in connection to an Aug. 29 incident during which a Border Patrol agent fired four shots at a man pointing a weapon at the agent near the Rio Grande while pursuing a group of immigrants east of Brownsville, according to documents from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Brownsville.
