A 72-year-old man will spend more than 12 years behind bars for creating “Indiana Jones”-style booby traps in his home that injured a police officer in 2018.
A judge in Oregon, in the United States, sentenced Gregory Rodvelt to 150 months in prison, as well as three years of supervised release.
A jury convicted him in June of assaulting a federal officer and using and discharging a firearm in connection with a crime of violence.
Property riddled with traps
On September 7, 2018, police explosives technicians and FBI agents visited property previously owned by Mr. Rodvelt.
The latter had lost the property during a trial. However, when he learned that the place was going to be sold, he set traps.
Image provided by police | Oregon County
When authorities arrived, they noticed a van blocking the front door and containing two traps with steel teeth typically used to catch animals, the criminal complaint states.
Having not discovered explosives in the van’s traps, the technicians continued to approach the house.
A jacuzzi was located near the residence. He had been “tricked in such a way that when the door was opened, he activated a mechanical trigger that caused the jacuzzi to roll towards the person at the entrance, much like a scene from the movie Indiana Jones: The Adventures of of the Lost Ark” where actor Harrison Ford is forced to go around a giant block of stone that he inadvertently triggered using a trick switch,” the criminal complaint further detailed.
The windows of the house were barred from the inside, while numerous bullet holes pierced the front door.
Trapped wheelchair
According to the prosecutor’s office, the authorities then came across a “rat trap modified so that it could be armed with a shotgun cartridge. The trap was connected to the main garage door, and was activated when it was opened.
The technicians used an explosive charge to gain access to the interior of Mr. Rodvelt’s house and noticed another trap.
Image taken from Google
There was apparently a wheelchair that, when struck, “triggered a homemade shotgun device that discharged a shotgun shell that struck the FBI bomb squad below the knee.”
The federal agent was transported to a local hospital, where he was treated for his injury before leaving the hospital.
In a statement, Nathan Lichvarcik, chief of the Eugene and Medford offices of the United States Department of Justice, said: “Fueled by anger and bitterness, this defendant framed a property in South Texas. Oregon with the intent to seriously injure someone. Unfortunately, his trap worked and he injured an FBI bomb technician,” lamented Nathan Lichvarcik, head of the Eugene and Medford offices of the United States Department of Justice, in a statement.
Kieran Ramsey, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Portland Field Office, added: “This individual went to great lengths to set up complex and deadly concealed traps to prevent FBI agents from doing their jobs. It wasn’t a joke.”
Mr. Rodvelt had already been arrested in the past in Arizona for illegal possession of explosives.
