SerpApi.Org
The crazed, homeless ex-US soldier who lit a raging blaze and fired a “BB rifle” outside ICE’s New York headquarters in Manhattan first eyed other city sites for a possible “attack,” federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
Andrew Arrabaca, 43, told the feds that he visited “several other sites and locations” in the Big Apple in recent months while carrying some of the smorgasbord of weapons police recovered from Monday’s chaotic scene, prosecutor Samantha Fry said during the Army vet’s first appearance in Manhattan federal court.
Arrabaca, a mentally ill Poughkeepsie native, wore a military-style helmet bearing several phrases, including “kill yourself,” during the mayhem outside 26 Federal Plaza, according to his public defender and criminal complaint.
“He understood that he might die. … I think it’s clear that there is a mental-health issue going on here,” Arrabaca’s lawyer, Jennifer Brown, told the court.
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The federal building houses ICE’s New York field office as well as immigration courts and has become a hotbed of protests against President Trump’s deportation dragnet.
Arrabaca had hauled a cart to the building bearing a sign that read “ICE Off Our Streets,” set off fireworks and shot the pellet gun several times before dumping and igniting a flammable liquid near the downtown building’s crowded entrance, authorities said.
He was also allegedly carrying a machete, two axes, a hammer and other weapons when officers nabbed him outside the building.
Multiple people were evaluated for injuries on the scene, including at least one victim who had a gash on the back of their head after being hit with debris from the fire or explosion, the complaint said.
Arrabaca began planning his crime in January, when he started purchasing various weapons at locations in the New York area, prosecutors said Tuesday. He told federal agents that he targeted what he had previously observed was a “busy entrance,” Fry said in court.
“He admitted that he was aware that people could be hurt and that he was willing to accept this risk,” the prosecutor said.
Arrabaca was diagnosed with a medical condition in 2020 but stopped taking his meds a year later, Fry said without specifying the condition. He was living out of his car and had slept in a downtown park the night before the shocking incident, the prosecutor said.
US Magistrate Judge Robin Tarnofsky ordered the disturbed vet held without bail on a single charge of arson that nonetheless carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison if he’s convicted.
“This is an individual who has served our country and, notwithstanding what he appears to have done, is quite clearly ill,” the judge said, urging staff at the Metropolitan Detention Center to set Arrabaca up with appropriate treatment.
