WI man arrested for fire-bombing anti-abortion group after DNA was pulled from a half-eaten BURRITO
A Wisconsin man was arrested at a Boston airport with a one-way ticket to Guatemala a year after torching an anti-abortion group.
Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury, 29, of Madison, was arrested Tuesday at Boston’s Logan International Airport by the US Attorney’s Office in Madison after DNA from a half-eaten burrito connected him to the crime.
He was charged with one count of attempting to cause harm by means of fire or an explosive. He made an initial appearance in federal court in Boston on Tuesday.
If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum of five years and up to 20 years in prison.
Federal agents have been searching for him for nearly a year for throwing a pair of Molotov cocktails at the Wisconsin Family Action office in Madison on May 6, 2022. One of the firebombs failed to ignite, the other set a bookcase on fire.
The message “if abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you” was spray-painted on the outside of the building.
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Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury, 29, of Madison, was taken into custody at Boston Logan International Airport Tuesday by the US Attorney’s Office in Madison. He was charged with one count of attempting to cause harm by means of fire or an explosive.
Federal agents have been searching for him for nearly a year for throwing a pair of Molotov cocktails at the Wisconsin Family Action office in Madison on May 6, 2022 (pictured). One of the firebombs failed to ignite; the other set fire to a bookstore
Last January, police assigned to protect the state Capitol building in Madison reviewed surveillance video of a protest against police brutality. The footage showed several people spray-painting graffiti on the Capitol grounds that resembled the graffiti at the Wisconsin Family Action office.
The footage showed two people leaving the area in a white van, which investigators traced to Roychowdhury’s Madison residence, according to the complaint. Then the police started following him.
On March 1, investigators observed the suspect enter a Madison park and ride and throw away a bag of fast food. After he left, police took the contents of the bag, including a partially eaten burrito wrapped in waxed paper, out of the trash.
Seventeen days later, DNA found on the burrito was found to match DNA taken from the Wisconsin Family Action office, according to the complaint.
The message: “If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you” was spray-painted on the outside of the building.
An Antifa symbol was also spray painted on the building (pictured)
According to the criminal complaint against Roychowdury, investigators extracted DNA samples from three people from evidence at the scene of the Wisconsin attack. But the samples did not match any profiles in the US Department of Justice’s DNA database.
The first DNA swab, identified as Male 1, was found on the cocktail flask, the inside of the lighter, and the cloth. But since he wasn’t in the national database, it caused federal and local authorities to spend months looking for Roychowdury.
Investigators have been unable to match the other two DNA profiles from the scene to anyone, according to the complaint.
The US Attorney’s Office said in a statement that Roychowdhury traveled from Madison this month to Portland, Maine. He had a one-way ticket for a flight from Boston to Guatemala City, Guatemala, that was scheduled to depart Tuesday morning when he was arrested, the office said.
Roychowdhury was a research assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but resigned after the attack.
The attack came about a week after a draft opinion was leaked suggesting the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion.
The launch sparked abortion rights supporters to stage protests across the country. Two Catholic churches in Colorado were vandalized in the days before the Madison bombing. And someone threw Molotov cocktails at the office of an anti-abortion organization in a suburb of Salem, Oregon, several days later.
The court officially struck down Roe v. Wade in June, bringing Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban back into play.
The damage was discovered on Mother’s Day morning when a passerby called police and reported seeing smoke billowing from the anti-abortion group’s headquarters.
The Antifa symbol, a capital ‘A’ within a circle, was also scrawled on the wall, as were the numbers 1312, a code for the letters ACAB, which stand for ‘All Cops Are Bastards’.
The damage was discovered on Mother’s Day morning when a passerby called police and reported seeing smoke billowing from the anti-abortion group’s headquarters (pictured)
Julaine Appling, president of Wisconsin Family Action, told the Wisconsin State Journal at the time a window was broken, books were burned and there was graffiti on the walls.
“What you’re going to see here is a direct threat against us,” Appling told the newspaper at the time. ‘Imagine if someone had been in the office when this happened. They would have been injured.
Over time, Appling offered a $5,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest. He accused Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes of being more interested in empathizing with abortion rights activists than bringing suspects to justice.
Appling had no comment Tuesday about Roychowdhury’s arrest.
“I am very proud of the tireless and determined efforts of the combined federal, state and local team to identify and arrest this individual,” said William McCrary, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. US The St. Paul Explosives Field Division, which handles crimes in Wisconsin. “It is very satisfying for me to see that this alleged perpetrator has been taken into custody.”