Hearing of second Maui bombing suspect scheduled

COURTESY OF FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Maui Police Department are currently investigating explosive devices left in the Kahului and Pukalani areas of Maui, according to a joint statement from the FBI’s Honolulu Division and MPD.

COURTESY OF FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Maui Police Department are currently investigating explosive devices left in the Kahului and Pukalani areas of Maui, according to a joint statement from the FBI’s Honolulu Division and MPD.

A 43-year-old man arrested Wednesday in connection with the ongoing investigation into improvised explosive devices in the Kula and Kahului area will make his first appearance in federal court on Monday.

Jess Kiesel Lee will appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Rome A. Trader at 10:30 a.m. after being charged Tuesday in a federal court criminal complaint with being a felon in possession of an explosive on Aug. 7 that was shipped or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce and maliciously damaging property using an explosive that affects interstate commerce.

Lee was arrested as part of the MPD and FBI investigation.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jonathan D. Slack and Wayne A. Myers are prosecuting the case. Lee’s attorney is Audrey LE

Stanley, sir.

On August 7, at around 4:45 p.m., MPD officers encountered “multiple improvised explosive devices” near Kaamana Street in Kula.

“MPD determined that multiple IEDs had been detonated at this location along the road,” an FBI agent said in an affidavit.

One of the IEDs detonated consisted of a “pipe that was attached to a railing and detonated.”

This detonation appeared to have caused “significant damage to the guardrail” and the surrounding area. After the explosive devices found were defused, MPD officials sent the explosives to the FBI laboratory for analysis, the criminal complaint states.

FBI personnel trained in explosives analysis concluded that the IEDs were “firearms containing explosive and incendiary material capable of causing destruction by explosive force.”

The IEDs did not appear to have been “designed as weapons,” but could have “explosive and/or dangerous consequences.”

FBI lab technicians found one of Lee’s fingerprints on the adhesive side of a tape on one of the functional IEDs found on Kaamana Street in Kula, approximately 15 to 25 feet from the damaged railing.

According to a preliminary analysis by the FBI laboratory, the explosive device is said to contain a “mixture of strontium carbonate, aluminum and a component consistent with potassium perchlorate.”

The FBI agent wrote that aluminum and potassium perchlorate can be used to make flash powder, an explosive, and that no company in Hawaii manufactures and assembles flash powder.

Lee has been cited and arrested more than 30 times at the state level, including for assault and terroristic threats. Lee lives a five- to 10-minute drive from where the explosive device allegedly bearing his fingerprint was found.

On August 28, investigators received information from “Company A, an online retail company that sells pyrotechnic chemicals and accessories,” including Lee’s shipping and email address as part of his customer account.

Lee’s arrest is the second resulting from the joint MPD-FBI investigation into a series of IEDs abandoned on Maui, one of which detonated and damaged an SUV.

On August 13, a federal judge ordered the 47-year-old Kahului resident to be held without bail after he was arrested on August 10 on a federal warrant charging him with “possession of an unregistered explosive device and attempting to damage property using explosives.”

On July 23, Maui Police Department officers encountered an improvised explosive device near Lono Avenue in Kahului on the street next to Kahului Elementary School.

The bomb contained explosives, a battery and grenade fragments. Dumaran’s fingerprints were reportedly found on the device.

detonated IEDs near Kaamana Road in Kula on August 7 and an IED that destroyed a white Kia SUV in Pukalani on August 8.

in connection with any of these events.