Mississippi man arrested after letters with poison sent to Obama
OXFORD, MISS. — A Mississippi man was arrested Wednesday, accused of sending letters to U.S. President Barack Obama and a senator that tested positive for the poisonous ricin and set the nation’s capital on edge a day after the Boston Marathon bombings.
FBI Special Agent Daniel McMullen said Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, was arrested at 5:15 p.m. at his apartment in Corinth, near the Tennessee state line about 160 kilo- metres east of Memphis. It wasn’t immediately known where he was being held.
Authorities still waited for definitive tests on the letters to Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss. Preliminary field tests can often show false positives for ricin. The letters were intercepted before reaching the White House or Senate.
An FBI intelligence bulletin obtained by The Associated Press said those two letters were postmarked Memphis, Tenn.
Both letters said: “To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance.” Both were signed, “I am KC and I approve this message.”
As authorities scurried to investigate three questionable packages discovered in U.S. Senate office buildings, reports of suspicious items also came in from at least three senators’ offices in their home states.
Sen. Carl Levin said a staff member at his Saginaw, Mich., office would spend the night in a hospital as a precaution after discovering a suspicious letter.
The staff member had no symptoms, Levin said in a statement. He expected to learn preliminary results of tests on the letter by Thursday.
Sen. Jeff Flake said suspicious letters at his Phoenix office had been cleared with nothing dangerous found. A package at Sen. John Cornyn’s Dallas-area office also was declared harmless, a fire department spokesman said.
All three packages in the U.S. Capitol complex turned out to be safe, capitol police spokeswoman Makema Turner said late Wednesday.