“Don’t be surprised when there’s a [expletive] bullet in the back of your [expletive] brain,” the caller said in a message.”
That’s the message that the Rev. Simon Bautista, Latino missioner for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, found on his answering machine in May. Now a suspect has turned himself in.
The Washington Post has the story:
A 34-year-old Maryland man was arrested yesterday on charges of making bomb threats against CASA of Maryland, an immigrant advocacy group based in Silver Spring.
Wesley J. Queen II of Pasadena turned himself in to Montgomery County police and was being held on a $250,000 bond, authorities said. He faces two counts of “false statements — threatening to use a destructive device” and two counts of telephone misuse.
CASA of Maryland runs four day-labor centers, where workers can gather while waiting to be picked up for jobs. On May 18, police said, Queen made telephone calls to CASA and to a CASA staff member’s cellphone. The staff member, Mario Quiroz, said the caller told him, “You shouldn’t be surprised if your places start blowing up in pieces,” according to a police report on the incident.
(Editor’s note: Simon’s office is across the hall from mine and he played the message for several of us back in May. It was chilling. The fact that we were able to trace the call using just the caller ID function on Simon’s phone was somewhat reassuring as it made us question the caller’s intelligence. On the other other hand, just because someone isn’t bright,doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous.)