By Steve Neavling
A man who drove a car into an FBI security gate in Pittsburgh and draped it with an American flag told agents he wanted to “make a statement,” the Associated Press reports, citing court records.
Donald Phillip Henson, 46, of Penn Hills, was arrested seven hours after fleeing the scene Wednesday and charged with assault with a deadly weapon and damaging government property. He will remain in custody until a detention hearing Tuesday.
“This was a targeted attack on this building,” Christopher Giordano, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh office, said.
No employees were hurt.
An affidavit says Henson invoked the phrase “sic semper tyrannis” — Latin for “thus always to tyrants” — when speaking with agents. The phrase was shouted by John Wilkes Booth after killing President Abraham Lincoln.
Giordano said Henson, a former member of the military, had visited the field office weeks earlier to make a “complaint that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.” Investigators found no explosives in his car, a white sedan with a U.S. Air Force sticker.
Public records show Henson filed for bankruptcy last year, reporting $380,000 in student loan debt and just $281 a month in income.
