A former employee at the Nutrien Ag Solutions facility in Moses Lake, Wash., has been arrested after allegedly stealing a urea-based fertilizer and other bomb-making material from the facility in order to blow it up. Fortunately, the makeshift bomb discovered in the back seat of his vehicle lacked the ammonium nitrate needed to be mixed with fuel to create an explosive. The Nutrien Lake location is a small warehouse terminal facility that primarily stores and sells basic NPK, according to the company, which said it employs around 13.
Ryan S. Palmer, 39, Moses Lake, was apprehended on the night of Dec. 27 after he was pulled over by a Grant County sheriff’s deputy in a routine traffic stop. The deputy found the urea fertilizer, magnesium, an antifreeze bottle filled with diesel fuel, and a mortar made from a PVC pipe, gun powder, and a plastic syringe. The potential fertilizer bomb was not fully constructed.
Will Tigley, a Nutrien spokesman, told Green Markets that the company continues to cooperate with law enforcement regarding the incident. He said the company has taken proactive steps to enhance and upgrade its Moses Lake plant and stresses safety at all its sites. Tigley emphasized that no products hazardous to the community were stolen. “Nutrien takes this very seriously,” he said.
Working with the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives, Richland Police Department, and Washington State Patrol, sheriff’s deputies executed a search warrant at Palmer’s home and found “only a small amount of precursor” bomb materials in addition to what was found in his vehicle, Kyle Foreman, sheriff’s office public information officer, told Green Markets.
Palmer told authorities that he had worked at the Nutrien site as a chemical driver until 2015. According to court records, Palmer also told investigators he wanted to “prove a point” that the Nutrien facility had lax security measures, and that he had toyed with the idea of blowing it up. He insisted, however, that he would not have followed through with it.
An interview report said Palmer told investigators that he walked throughout the Moses Lake plant more than 20 times with no one confronting him to prove how easily the plant could have been damaged by a fertilizer bomb. He told deputies he planned to drive explosive materials through the plant and then go to the Tri-Cities to inform management about what he accomplished. Security cameras corroborated Palmer’s claim of entering the plant to steal materials.
Records state Palmer also allegedly invoked the name of Timothy McVeigh, who perpetrated the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others in the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. McVeigh detonated a rental truck filled with 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane to destroy a federal building.
Palmer was pulled over not far from where one of two unsolved Moses Lake bombing homicides happened in 2008, Foreman mentioned. The other one occurred about seven miles outside the city. In those incidents, expertly designed bombs were placed in what looked like a police scanner and a car battery. They detonated eight to 10 hours apart, killing two people. “We’re confident the two bombings from 2008 were connected,” he said, noting that the cold cases are not closed.
Palmer remains jailed on burglary and threats-to-bomb charges. His bail has been set at $100,000. He was assigned a public defender for his arraignment, Foreman said. Family members have indicated that Palmer’s mental health and judgment may have been impaired by drug addiction.
Officials with the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries said the agency is working with law enforcement to investigate whether the company’s license will be affected by the incident, which is standard procedure. The department regulates and licenses companies that manufacture, use, store, buy, or sell chemicals such as those handled by Nutrien. It has not opened a separate investigation into whether the lack of security at the Moses Lake plant endangered worker safety.