North Carolina man sentenced to 25 years for teaching bomb-making to person who targeted authorities
A federal judge on Friday sentenced a North Carolina man to 25 years in prison for teaching someone how to make bombs meant to kill federal law enforcement officers.
RALEIGH, N.C. — A federal judge on Friday sentenced a North Carolina man to 25 years in prison for teaching someone how to make bombs meant to kill federal law enforcement officers.
A jury had found Christopher Arthur, 40, guilty in 2023 for the bomb-related charges, as well as for illegally possessing weapons, including improvised explosives found on his farm in Mount Olive, North Carolina.
Arthur, a U.S. Army and North Carolina National Guard veteran who served two tours of duty in Iraq, founded a company called Tackleberry Solutions, which created manuals and videos teaching so-called wartime tactics. In addition to the bomb-making instructions, Arthur’s training manuals and videos included instructions for how to create “fatal funnels” meant to kill responding law enforcement with booby traps.
Arthur initially attracted the attention of the FBI in 2020 after some of his manuals were discovered in the possession of Joshua Blessed, a man who had attacked sheriff’s deputies and police officers in upstate New York. Blessed, a truck driver, died after leading officers on a nearly two-hour high-speed chase and gun battle.
Arthur was arrested in January 2022 after he provided instructions for how to construct bombs to a confidential human source, referred to as “Buckshot” by federal prosecutors.
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