Federal authorities announced Wednesday the arrest of a Washington state man they say provided chemicals to make explosives used to bomb a California fertility clinic in May.
Authorities say they arrested 32-year-old Daniel Jongyon Park on Tuesday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York upon his return from Poland.
Park shipped 180 pounds of ammonium nitrate to Guy Bartkus, who authorities believe bombed the American Reproductive Centers in Palm Springs last month, US Attorney Bill Essayli said during a news conference Wednesday. Days before the bombing, Park ordered an additional 90 pounds that were shipped to Bartkus separately, Essayli said.
Park is charged with providing and attempting to provide material support to a terrorist, according to a news release from the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. He made his initial court appearance Wednesday in the US District Court in Brooklyn, New York. If convicted, Park would face a maximum sentence of 15 years in federal prison, according to the Department of Justice.
Bartkus drove a car containing a bomb to the clinic on May 17 and detonated it, killing himself, injuring several people and destroying the clinic’s building. Other nearby buildings were also damaged.
First responders say they were able to enter the crumbling clinic and secure patients’ embryos and restore power to embryo incubators.
“Bringing chaos and violence to a facility that exists to help women and mothers is a particularly cruel, disgusting crime that strikes at the very heart of our shared humanity,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a Wednesday news release.
Essayli called the bombing a terrorist attack. “Domestic terrorism is evil and unacceptable. Those who aid terrorists can expect to feel the cold wrath of justice,” he said.
Ammonium nitrate is an explosive precursor that can be used to make homemade bombs, Essayli said. Park was in “possession of an explosive recipe that was similar to the Oklahoma City bombing,” Akil Davis, the FBI’s assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles field office said during the news conference.
In 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a powerful fertilizer bomb at Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people in what was the worst homegrown terrorist attack on US soil.
Federal authorities say Park, who lived in Kent, Washington, spent two weeks visiting Bartkus’ home in Twentynine Palms between late January and early February of this year. Essayli said the two ran experiments in Bartkus’ detached garage, where the FBI recovered “large quantities of chemical precursors and laboratory equipment after the bombing.”
Davis said Park and Bartkus shared similar ideologies. The assistant director said Park was attempting to recruit others with like-minded ideology, sharing posts on internet forums dating back to 2016. It is believed that Bartkus was not one of Park’s recruits but rather communicated with Park about their similar beliefs.
Both men are believed to have targeted the fertility clinic because of their anti pro-life ideology, Essayli said. “They don’t believe new life should be created,” the US attorney added.
The attack “could have killed innocent people,” FBI Director Kash Patel said Wednesday.
Davis said Park flew to Poland on May 21 – four days after the bombing – and was detained by Polish authorities on May 30 and deported to the US where he was arrested on Tuesday.
It is unclear why Park traveled to Poland.
“We must strive to prevent anything like this from happening again,” Davis said. “We want to learn everything about the ideology involved in this. We need to learn everything we can on anyone that assisted this. We need to keep our community safe.”
CNN’s Natasha Chen and Dalia Faheid contributed to this report.
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