Early on Friday, the media reported that there was an arrest in the bombing case of an NAACP office in Colorado Springs, CO, that some initially suspected was a hate crime. It now appears that the accused bomber was targeting a tax preparation office in the building, instead of the NAACP.
The bombing attempt occurred on January 7, and at the time, even the FBI was claiming that the bombing could be “domestic terrorism.” Also at the time, many news sources claimed it was surely a hate crime.
In fact, in a column for the St. Louis American, Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, an associate professor of constitutional law at John Jay College, insisted that it was an obvious hate crime.
But it has now emerged that the suspect in the bombing arrested this week, Thaddeus Murphy, 44, was actually targeting a tax preparation business in that same building. He was not at all interested in the NAACP.
According to 9News, “an affidavit said Murphy was targeting an accountant named Steve Dehaven who ‘wouldn’t return to him his tax records from 2006 to the present and wouldn’t return his phone calls.'”
The suspect was upset that he had to declare bankruptcy and blamed the accountant for his woes.
It is claimed that Murphy “flipped out” and “built the pipe bomb as a warning.”
So, it looks like that there was no “racist” attack on anyone, no “hate crimes” perpetrated, and the NAACP wasn’t even a target.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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