A man who was arrested Tuesday at the Orlando International Airport on charges that he stowed the components of a pipe bomb in his luggage told investigators he had purchased the pieces in Gainesville, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday.
Kevin C. Brown, 32, was stopped before boarding an Air Jamaica flight to Montego Bay when Transportation Security Administration employees found two vodka bottles containing nitromethane, a flammable fuel used in drag racing.
A model rocket igniter, lighters, prescription bottles filled with BB pellets and lighter fluid were also found inside his checked baggage, according to the document.
A backpack Brown was wearing at the time held diagrams on how to construct a pipe bomb using items like the ones in his luggage.
According to Seminole County Jail records, Brown's last residence was at 3700 27th Street, Gainesville's Lexington Crossing Apartments. Brown moved in with his brother, Theo, in early February, according to their roommate, UF alumnus Blake Bonsack.
In the court document, an FBI task force agent wrote that Brown said he bought the items in Gainesville and intended to assemble and then detonate the pipe bomb on a tree stump in Jamaica.
Later, Brown said he hoped to show friends how to build explosives "like the kind he saw in Iraq," according to the document.
Authorities did not release information about whether and when Brown was there.
The agent went on to write that Brown could have assembled the bomb by using the nitromethane as a detonator and the model rocket igniter as a wick.
Brown told the agent that he had concealed the liquid in a vodka bottle to sidestep examination by the airport's security.
According to The Associated Press, Brown's court-appointed public defender, Clarence Counts, declined to comment as he prepared for a formal bond hearing Thursday.
As of Wednesday, Brown was ordered by a federal judge to be detained in Orlando without bail until later in the investigation.
