PORTLAND, Maine — The Norwegian tourist arrested in August after threatening to kill Portland police officers with explosives and assault rifles pleaded guilty Monday to a federal charge of making threatening interstate communications.
Espen Brungodt, 28, of Norway sent a detailed email on Aug. 13 to the Portland Police Department and to the Portland Press Herald in which he threatened to kill police officers.
He was arrested without incident by federal agents and local police at an Old Port hotel where he was staying with his family, who were unaware of his threats, according to Portland police.
Brungodt faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on the federal charge he pleaded guilty to during Monday’s hearing in U.S. District Court.
In the email, Brungodt said he and his partners intended to use assault rifles to “shoot and kill as many police officers as they can” from atop a parking garage near the Portland Police Department’s Middle Street headquarters, according to The Portland Press Herald, which received the email.
The message claimed the parking garage was booby-trapped with explosives, though police checked the garage — which they closed during the investigation — and found no bombs, Portland police Chief Michael Sauschuck said at the time.
The nearby Cumberland County Courthouse also was closed later in the day when police learned the suspect may have been nearby.
He was not armed at the time of his arrest, police said.
The threat put police on high alert, and it came just weeks after two high-profile attacks against law enforcement in other states and one day before Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was scheduled to hold a rally at Portland’s Merrill Auditorium.
A gunman shot six officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, last month, killing three. That attack came less than two weeks after a sniper in Dallas, Texas, killed five officers and wounded seven others at a previously peaceful Black Lives Matter protest. The Dallas attack has been called the deadliest event for police since 9/11.
Brungodt will be sentenced after the completion of a presentence investigation report by the U.S. Probation Office.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said it expects that Brungodt will seek to have any sentence imposed on him served in Norway pursuant to the International Prisoner Transfer Program, which permits the transfer of prisoners from countries in which they had been convicted of crimes to their home countries.
The program is designed to relieve some of the special hardships that fall upon offenders incarcerated far from home and to facilitate the rehabilitation of these offenders.
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Portland Police Department.
The public defender representing Brungodt, David Beneman, declined to comment on his client’s plea.
BDN writer Jake Bleiberg contributed to this report.