A Washington State man with a history of writing incoherent notes to the military was arrested late last night for sending suspicious packages to military bases and government buildings in Washington D.C.
Forty-three-year-old Thang Cong Phan was taken into custody shortly before midnight on Monday. Phan had sent eleven packages containing “potential destructive devices” to government locations within the previous twenty-four hours, according to the FBI.
Included in the locations receiving the suspicious packages were CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Fort Belvoir, in Virginia, Fort Lesly J. McNair in Washington D.C. and the Secret Service.
The package addressed to Fort McNair had black powder inside and what appeared to be a fuse.
All of the packages were detected by scanning devices, neutralized, then sent to the FBI for analysis. There were no reported injuries.
No motive for the sending of the packages was immediately apparent. Phan was taken into custody at his home in Everett, Washington. According to the FBI there doesn’t seem to be any connection to terrorism, but they cautioned that it’s possible additional packages were sent before Phan was apprehended.
The incidents come less than a week after a suspect in a series of package bombings in Austin, Texas, killed himself as authorities were closing in on him. Two people were killed, and several were injured in a string of five package bombs that started on March 2.