A 71-year-old man named Gregory Rodvelt from Oregon has been found guilty by a federal jury for his involvement in setting up a boobytrap using a wheelchair to harm an FBI bomb technician. The wheelchair was rigged with a homemade shotgun device that would be triggered when bumped. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Oregon announced the verdict, which includes charges of assaulting a federal officer and using and discharging a firearm during a violent crime. While the sentencing date has not been disclosed, the potential maximum sentences for the charges are up to 20 years for assaulting a federal officer and up to life for discharging a firearm.
The incident occurred in 2018 when Oregon State Police and FBI bomb technicians arrived at a property that Rodvelt had lost control of due to a lawsuit. Allegedly motivated by his loss, Rodvelt set up various booby traps on the property, including the wheelchair equipped with a shotgun. Other traps discovered by the technicians included steel animal traps, spike strips, an overturned hot tub rigged to roll, and a rat trap modified to accept a shotgun shell. When the technicians entered the property, the wheelchair was triggered, causing the shotgun to discharge a .410 shell that struck one of the FBI technicians below the knee. The injured technician was then taken to a nearby hospital.