On Friday, August 2nd, a man from Florida pleaded guilty to attempting to detonate explosives outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. with a rifle last year.
Christopher Rodriguez, 45, from Panama City, Florida, was scheduled to be sentenced in Washington, D.C. on October 28th.
As per the terms of the plea agreement, Rodriguez and the prosecution agreed that a 7- to 10-year prison sentence would be appropriate.
Rodriguez admitted to three felony charges: destruction of foreign government property, using explosive materials to damage federal property, and possessing an unregistered firearm.
Rodriguez confessed that in the early hours of September 25, 2023, he drove from Florida to Washington, D.C. and took a taxi to an area near the Chinese Embassy.
He placed a black backpack containing 14 pounds of explosives about 12 feet away from the embassy’s wall and fence, then attempted to remotely detonate the explosives in the backpack by shooting it with a rifle, but missed the target.
Rodriguez is a U.S. military veteran born in Puerto Rico.
Investigators linked him to the attempted embassy attack through DNA found in the backpack.
Rodriguez was arrested on November 4, 2023, in Lafayette, Louisiana. He is a practicing attorney in Florida.
It is reported that in 2022, he used a similar method to destroy statues of Lenin and Mao Zedong in the yard outside the Texas Public Broadcasting building in San Antonio.
In November 2022, Rodriguez drove a rented car to San Antonio, climbed over an 8-foot fence into the yard with the statues of Lenin and Mao Zedong. He placed two cans of explosives on the base of the statues, climbed onto the roof, shot the cans with a rifle, causing an explosion that destroyed the statues.