An Illinois man allegedly told investigators he set fireplace to a Planned Parenthood clinic following feeling “upset” about a girlfriend’s abortion.
Tyler Massengill, 32, is accused of igniting a blaze at the Peoria Health Heart on Jan. 15, the Justice Office stated Wednesday. Surveillance video clip from that night time confirmed a gentleman putting on a coat with a hood pulled up and significantly of his face covered. He was found lighting a rag on hearth at 1 conclusion of a large bottle, smashing the clinic’s window and throwing the explosive inside.
Two days afterwards, the FBI joined Massengill to a truck spotted on surveillance footage from the incident. A tipster offered the vehicle’s license plate variety to authorities, and a prior reserving picture of Massengill matched up to illustrations or photos of the man or woman found on surveillance footage, the DOJ mentioned.
In a telephone job interview with investigators Tuesday, Massengill denied placing fire to the constructing, indicating he’d allow two men borrow his truck. But authorities explained he then changed his tale, allegedly stating that he commenced the fireplace after recalling a girlfriend’s abortion from three yrs earlier.
The prison criticism claimed:
At that time, MASSENGILL’s girlfriend had grow to be expecting. MASSENGILL’s girlfriend, who was in the Peoria place when he was performing in Alaska, knowledgeable MASSENGILL, via telephone, that she experienced elected to abort the child, which upset MASSENGILL. On or all around January 15, 2023, MASSENGILL heard or noticed anything that reminded him of the abortion, yet again upsetting him. MASSENGILL admitted that, on January 15, 2023, he broke the window out of the PHC and put a burning container inside of of the developing.
Massengill allegedly additional that if the assault triggered even “a minor delay” in someone receiving treatment at the clinic, then it was “all well worth it,” in accordance to the grievance.
Kelley Theisen, a representative for Planned Parenthood, reported at a rally Sunday that the injury was believed at $1 million and that the building would probably be closed for months, the Peoria Journal Star claimed.
Massengill is billed with malicious use of hearth and an explosive to hurt, and attempt to problems, property utilised in and impacting interstate commerce. He is presently below arrest and could encounter up to 40 many years in jail, as well as a achievable great of up to $250,000.
The Fort News