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COURTESTY: HAWAII NEWS NOW
A remote-controlled robot moves into position to examine what appeared to be a pipe bomb placed next to a home on 7th Avenue in Kaimuki.
A 45-year-old Chinatown resident has pleaded guilty to plotting to blow up at Kaimuki rooming house last year because he had a personal grudge against one of its tenants.
Patrick Lopes plead guilty Tuesday in federal court to attempting to maliciously damage a building by means of an explosive. Sentencing was set for June 3 at 1:30pm. He faces a minimum five-year sentence.
The FBI said Lopes planted the homemade bomb, which he devised from materials he bought at Home Depot, outside a rooming house on 7th Avenue on March 11, 2012.
The landlord of the rooming house told the FBI last year that Lopes lived in her building from June 1994 to August 2011, but she evicted him for smoking marijuana and because of complaints by other tenants.
A resident discovered the device — described as a silver galvanized pipe with a fuse, cigarette and matchbook — near the house’s gas line on March 11. The cigarette had been lit, but apparently went out.
The FBI arrested Lopes at his North Pauahi Street apartment two months later.
