Florida Lawyer Pleads Guilty for Attempting to Bomb Chinese Embassy in DC
A Florida attorney pleaded guilty for attempting to set off explosives outside the Chinese embassy in Washington DC and blowing up the statue of Mao Zedong and Vladmir Lenin in Texas.
Christopher Rodriguez admitted guilt to charges of damaging foreign government property, damaging federal property with explosives, and possessing an unregistered firearm, according to court documents filed in Washington DC, on Friday.
Court filings reveal that Rodriguez traveled from his home in Panama City, Florida, to Washington DC, last September, bringing with him 15 pounds (7 kg) of tannerite, a commercially available explosive that explodes upon impact with a high-velocity bullet.
Rodrigues is said to have hid the tannerite in a backpack, which he positioned outside the wall of the embassy. He then opened fire on the backpack with a rifle but missed the target and ran away from the scene.
The 45-year-old Army veteran was arrested in Louisiana in November after DNA evidence connected him to the backpack. He had been previously searched by police in California in 2021, where officers confiscated three firearms and two containers of tannerite from his vehicle.
The embassy incident was Rodriguez’s second crime using tannerite. In November 2022, he went to San Antonio, Texas, where the satirical sculpture ‘Miss Mao Trying to Poise Herself at the Top of Lenin’s Head’ was located on the Texas Public Radio property.
The artwork portrays a small, nude figure of Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong atop a large bust of Soviet revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.
Rodriguez climbed an eight-foot fence, placed two tannerite canisters at the sculpture’s base, and then fired at them from a nearby rooftop, causing ‘significant damage’ to the sculpture, according to court documents.
Rodriguez accepted a plea deal and will be sentenced in October, with an expected prison term of seven to ten years.
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