IED event in United States of America on Sun 22nd September 2024

A 21-year-old Mason man pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to illegally transporting explosive materials to a large soccer complex in Lebanon. James Phillips planned to detonate an improvised explosive device (IED) at the Lebanon Sports Complex early Sept. 22, 2024, but was stopped when a Lebanon police officer ordered him to leave because it was closed, federal prosecutors said. The officer discovered the live IED, and it was turned over to the Butler County Bomb Squad. Testing determined it contained two extremely dangerous explosives, Nickel Hydrazine Nitrate and Erythritol Tetranitrate, federal court records show. Court records released Wednesday show Phillips and his attorney both signed his plea agreement for the felony charge more than a month ago, back on Aug. 20. Phillips will be sentenced at a later date. The maximum sentence is 10 years in prison, but the plea agreement shows he and federal officials agreed to: Three years’ probation 100 community service hours, such as cleaning up the park. “The community service cannot involve chemistry.” Cannot “make, supervise others in making, or provide instructions on how to make explosive materials, including blasting agents and/or detonators” “Mental health treatment and/or counseling” Surrender all rights in all property seized during the investigation of this case Read the full plea agreement here: The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Phillips on April 17 after agents searched his parents’ home on Sentinel Oak Drive and locations in neighboring Liberty Township as well as Oxford. Phillips was originally charged with “Possession of an Unregistered Firearm (Destructive Device).” In a case that dates back to April 2024, prosecutors say Phillips built explosive devices in a shed behind his parents’ home in the Crooked Tree Preserve subdivision and then transported them to places to be detonated, including the sports complex. Phillips’s attorney, Scott Croswell, has maintained that this was a hobby for Phillips, who had an interest in chemistry, influenced by his chemist parents. “Essentially, what the government said happened, happened, but the atmosphere of how it happened is different. It was a hobby,” Croswell said in court earlier this year. No one was hurt and there were no attempts or intention to injure anyone or property without permission, he noted, including the IED left behind at the Lebanon sports complex. “The idea was to explode in the parking lot like it’s exploded in other places and go home, but he was interrupted by police,” Croswell said in court back in April. “He made a mistake here, no more than that.” Phillips graduated from St. Xavier High School and worked at the Ohio Department of Transportation as a part-time, temporary seasonal employee driving snow plows, according to his personnel file. He worked in ODOT’s District 8, which serves Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Clermont, Clinton and Preble counties. ODOT, however, fired Phillips effective April 21, the day before his federal detention hearing. Phillips is licensed to drive commercial vehicles and was working as a commercial driver for Auto Zone when he applied to ODOT, state records show. While Croswell negotiated over the summer with federal authorities on his behalf, Phillips has remained out of jail on his own recognizance in the custody of his parents. He has been under a court order to stay at their 7-bedroom, 7,061-square-foot abode valued at $881,650, according to the Warren County Auditor’s Office. Phillips has also been prohibited since his arrest from having guns or destructive devices, buying chemicals or precursor materials that could create or produce explosives, and from accessing or using the shed behind his parents’ house. Restoring a convicted felon’s firearm rights is rare and requires specific, written authorization from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it. Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send it to us herewith a brief description.