- Oct 17, 2011
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Florida lawyer admits trying to ignite bomb outside Chinese Embassy in D.C.
A criminal defense lawyer from Florida pleaded guilty Friday to trying to ignite an explosive device outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington last year, and he also admitted that he used the same method to cause an explosion in San Antonio in 2022 outside the headquarters of Texas Public Radio. His plea agreement calls for a sentence of seven to 10 years in prison, but the judge said Friday he had not decided whether to accept the sentencing terms.Christopher Rodriguez, 45, a former public defender from Panama City, Fla., admitted that he placed a backpack containing explosive material next to a lamp post about 12 feet behind the Chinese Embassy in Northwest Washington on the morning of Sept. 25. He then went back across Van Ness Street to a vacant lot on the University of the District of Columbia campus and fired several shots at the backpack, but he missed, court records indicate.
However, Rodriguez used the same technique successfully in San Antonio in November 2022, prosecutors said. In that incident, Rodriguez placed explosive material at the base of a sculpture next to the San Pedro Creek Culture Park ... causing a brief explosion which did minor damage to the sculpture titled “Miss Mao Trying to Poise Herself at the Top of Lenin’s Head.” It shows a small, feminized figure of Mao Zedong using a long pole to balance on Vladimir Lenin’s head.
[He was identified through DNA from a 2021 stop in Los Angeles where he was found with multiple firearms and tannerite "a brand of exploding targets designed to blow up when hit by a bullet, “which is consistent with the substance recovered from the backpack found outside the Chinese Embassy.”"]
