U.S. Attorney Karen L. Loeffler announced on Tuesday that a Ketchikan man was sentenced in Ketchikan Federal Court for receiving and possessing explosive materials by a convicted felon.

According to the release, Joseph Duane Brown of Ketchikan was sentenced to five years probation, 30 days in a halfway house and 300 hours of community work service for making and setting off an explosive device, using a seal bomb, as a detonator, and a binary explosive mixture of ammonium nitrate strung together into at least 20 one-pound devices.

The explosive device was set off in the Ketchikan tunnel on July 4th, 2013. When the explosive device went off in the tunnel, it temporarily knocked out the central communications records management system for Ketchikan’s Police Department dispatch center. A driver who was in the tunnel at the time of detonation, said the explosion rattled their car. They described the explosion as “super dangerous.”

The Ketchikan Police Department initiated the investigation into the incident, but the investigation was later taken over by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATFE). ATFE would, through their investigation, determine that Brown had assembled the device.

Brown would admit in court that “he purchased and assembled the ingredients to make the explosive devices and he was the one responsible for setting off the devices inside the Ketchikan Tunnel,” the Justice Department release said.

Judge Burgess told the court that the offence was serious enough in nature to impose the five year probation. He also gave deterrence as another reason for the five year sentence.

  alcohol tobacco and firearms, device, explosive, felon, investigation, joseph brown, ketchikan, sentencing, tunnel