WASHINGTON — A Maryland man who prosecutors say was inspired by the Islamic State group plotted to ram a stolen U-Haul truck into as many pedestrians as possible at a popular convention and tourist destination just outside the nation’s capital, federal prosecutors said Monday.
The allegation was made in a court filing Monday as prosecutors in Maryland urged a judge to keep the defendant, 28-year-old Rondell Henry, detained on a charge of driving a stolen vehicle across state lines. The police arrested him on March 28 after officers saw him leap over a security fence near where he had parked the truck.
“I was just going to keep driving and driving and driving. I wasn’t going to stop,” the document quotes Henry as telling the authorities who questioned him.
The six-page motion describes Henry as harboring hatred for “disbelievers” over the last two years and looking to emulate Islamic State militants he saw on beheading videos and fighting overseas. Henry, a computer engineer by trade, walked off his job in the middle of the day last month and stole a U-Haul van from a storage location in Virginia after determining that his four-door sedan “would not cause the catastrophic damage that he desired.”
