An unnamed FBI bomb technician missed one of the many traps which Gregory Lee Rodvelt rigged throughout an Oregon home and got himself shot in the leg. The man who placed the extensive collection of elaborate contraptions was found guilty on June 6. One of them has everyone drawing comparisons to Indiana Jones.
Traps were everywhere
The FBI bomb technician knew there were traps all over the property, that’s why he was there in the first place. He has one of those jobs where you either get the answer right or wrong. Wrong answers blow up in your face. In this case, his leg.
Luckily, he didn’t have it blown off but it came close. The 71-year-old suspect had rigged a shotgun shell to a mouse trap and tied the trigger to a wheelchair, placed directly in front of the door.
For the bomb technician, getting through the door was like reaching a new level in a video game. He’d been disarming traps from the driveway to the front porch, including one of the Indiana Jones variety.
Oregon man Gregory Lee Rodvelt who rigged home with ‘Indiana Jones’ booby trap and injured federal officer convicted by jury https://t.co/HsvvpFgwOz pic.twitter.com/fsj2198s66
— Wallup Daily News (@Brospar2022) June 10, 2023
The agent had cautiously blown the door off, then casually and painfully nudged the wheelchair aside without checking it for tripwires first. Game over. Better luck next time. At least he got out of the arcade with more quarters.
The home had belonged to Rodvelt’s mother. While in Arizona state prison, on a separate matter, Rodvelt learned the state “had appointed an attorney to sell off his property in Williams, Oregon — over 200 miles south of Portland near the California border.” Arizona was nice enough to let him out of prison for two weeks, so he could “prepare to turn over his Oregon property.” He prepared alright.
“During his time to prep the property he lost, Rodvelt had rigged the home with booby traps and placed a sign on his property warning those who entered of the ‘improvised devices‘ he scattered to deter law enforcement from entering.”
Indiana Jones rolling hot tub
Rodvelt had been in prison because of “a standoff with Arizona police in Sun City after a victim reported to police he was brandishing a firearm at him in April 2017.” The standoff happened when “Police pulled over Rodvelt, but he refused to cooperate with law enforcement and barricaded himself inside his car, causing several agencies to respond and a partial shutdown of US Route 60.”
He eventually gave up and they put him in the pokey for “5 years of imprisonment on charges of unlawful possession of explosives.” He had more in Oregon. A lot more. He built all sorts of nifty traps using them.
Before the FBI tried to raid his entrapped home, Rodvelt warned the bureau that “fishing line and a tripwire” were strategically placed “across the property gate that went to a round hot tub that was on its side set to roll down the hill and hit whoever comes through the gate.”
Gregory Lee Rodvelt, 71, was found guilty of assaulting a federal officer and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence involving an “Indiana Jones”-inspired booby trap. https://t.co/rcFUhgwxiD
— NECN (@NECN) June 9, 2023
He left the other tripwire as an exercise for the class. On September 7, 2018 “Bomb technicians from the Oregon State Police (OSP) and FBI were called to the property.”
They were “alarmed” by the number of harmful traps. An attorney had run over “homemade spike strips.” The hot tub had been “rigged in a manner that when a gate was opened,” could potentially “crush whoever was near the vicinity.”
They cleared what they found as they approached the home. They “used an explosive charge to breach the front door.” Once inside, the group was met with a wheelchair in the center of the front entryway rigged with a shotgun shell that fired into an FBI bomb technician’s knee.