Fbi Says Teen’s Bomb Threat Was Extortion Attempt
A troubled teenager shot to death by an FBI agent at Bonneville Dam tried to extort $15,000 from the government by threatening to blow the dam up, an FBI spokeswoman said Monday.
Nathaniel Milligan, 18, died at the scene of Sunday evening’s shooting near a visitors’ center at the dam, about 40 miles east of Portland.
Investigators suspect he is the man who made a taped bomb threat found in a tape recorder left in a telephone booth at a dam visitors’ center. Milligan appeared about two hours after the tape was found, demanding money.
Milligan lived in a trailer in a Native American fishing encampment about a quarter-mile upstream from the dam. His father said he had mental problems and had been convicted of raping a child.
“I’d like to know what knocked him off the deep end,” said Cyrus Wheeler, who lives next to the trailer Milligan used at the river’s edge.
“Nobody knows what’s in a man’s mind - something we’ll never know,” Wheeler said. He said he last saw Milligan a few hours before the shooting and had no hint anything was wrong.
Authorities said no explosives were found. Except for the visitors’ center, which remained closed, operations returned to normal Monday at the dam, said Diana Brimhall, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps operates the sprawling hydropower installation on the Columbia River along the Oregon-Washington border.
Milligan was shot as he approached an FBI agent and an Oregon state trooper with a loaded .22-caliber rifle in one hand and what he said was a detonator in the other, said Burdena Pasenelli, special agent in charge of the FBI office in Seattle. Pasenelli said the “detonator” turned out to be a cell phone.
The recording was found about 4 p.m. Sunday by tourists on the Washington side of the dam spanning the Columbia River, Pasenelli said. The tape recorder had a sign on it that said “play me,” she said.
Authorities evacuated about 15 people working at the visitor center and at the adjacent powerhouse No. 2 and warned fishermen away from the dam.
Milligan later showed up at the dam and, after a confrontation, was shot by the FBI agent about 6:45 p.m., Pasenelli said.
The shooting occurred outside a small brick building where visitors can watch salmon as they swim past fish ladders. Based on Milligan’s comments at the dam, investigators believe he was the same person who had left the taped threat and extortion demand, Pasenelli said.
Milligan’s father, John Milligan of Portland, told KGW television that his son, who went by the nickname “Ricky” and would have turned 19 today, was manic depressive and heard voices.
“Ricky does things to get attention sometimes,” the father said. “He had a rough life.” Skamania County court records showed the teenager had been convicted on the child sex abuse charge in 1994.
No one else was injured. About 110 people work at Bonneville on an average day, but only a handful were present Sunday evening, Brimhall said.
The dam, located 40 miles east of Portland, was built in the 1930s along the Columbia River and was the first of eight lock-and-dam projects on the river. The dam’s two powerhouses and locks span 2,175 feet.
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