Man arrested after trying to pull off Oklahoma City bombing similar to 1995 blast was 'out for blood

Man arrested after trying to pull off Oklahoma City bombing similar to 1995 blast was 'out for blood'

A 23-year-old Oklahoma man has been arrested after he tried to blow up a bank in downtown Oklahoma City using a vehicle bomb similar to the one that destroyed the federal building there in 1995, federal officials said Monday.

The man, Jerry Drake Varnell, had been plotting the attack for months, officials said, but was thwarted by a long-running undercover investigation led by an FBI joint terrorism task force.

Varnell was arrested early Saturday after he parked a van loaded with what he believed to be a working explosive device in an alley next to the bank, and then dialed a number on a cellphone that he thought would set it off, officials said. The device was inert and could not explode, officials said.

According to court documents, Varnell had espoused an anti-government ideology and had expressed an interest in carrying out an attack that would echo the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, which killed 168 people.

Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/us-news/2017/08/14/man-arrested-trying-pull-oklahoma-city-bombing-similar-1995-blast-blood