The crazed US Army soldier who lit a raging blaze and fired a “BB rifle” outside ICE’s New York headquarters eyed other sites first for a possible “attack,” federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
Andrew Arrabaca, 43, told the feds that he visited “several other sites and locations” in New York City in recent months, while carrying some of the smorgasbord of weapons police recovered from Monday’s chaotic scene, prosecutor Samantha Fry said during the vet’s first appearance in Manhattan federal court.
Arrabaca, a Poughkeepsie native, was wearing a military-style helmet bearing a suicidal message during the mayhem, which unfolded outside 26 Federal Plaza, his public defender said.
“He understood that he might die… I think it’s clear that there is a mental health issue going on here,” defense attorney Jennifer Brown told the court.
The federal building houses ICE’s New York field office as well as immigration courts, and has become a hotbed of protests of President Trump’s deportation dragnet.
Arrabaca set off fireworks, shot the pellet gun several times and was carrying a machete, two axes, a hammer and other weapons at the time of his arrest outside the building, authorities said.
He was ordered held without bail on a charge of arson that carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, if convicted
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