It hasn’t gotten much attention nationally, but on Monday a man and a woman in their 20s showed up at an entrance to one of the most important military bases in the country with a car full of guns and fraudulent military ID.
The pair was promptly arrested at a gate of Florida’s MacDill Air Force Base — which is home to U.S. Central Command, among other important units. But what they were intending to do is still not publicly known. Here’s a look at what we do know:
The military has identified the two people as Micah Noel Goodier of Palm Beach, FL, and Christopher Kilburn. He is an AWOL Army specialist who was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, with Alpha Company, 1-16th 1st Infantry Division. It’s not clear when he went AWOL.
Around 5 p.m. Monday, the pair drove up to what the AP calls a “remote entrance” of the base in a Honda CRV and showed phony military identification to a guard, who asked them to get out of the vehicle. They did not resist arrest.
Three handguns and three “rifle-style weapons” with ammo were found in the Honda, a MacDill official said Tuesday.
The military has said this incident is not related to terrorism but it has been mum on any details of what it is about.
Kilburn’s father tells Fox News his son was trying to impress Goodier: “This is all just about a girl. There’s really nothing nefarious here about him trying to get on the base.”
According to Culpeper, Virginia, court records, Kilburn was arrested in June 2005 and charged with forging a public record and unlawfully obtaining a DMV document. The offense date is listed as August, 2003. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor obstruction of justice charges and got two years probation plus a one year suspended prison sentence. The exact nature of the case is not clear.
Kilburn’s former sister-in-law, Jennifer Nelson Spitzer, told the Tampa Tribune that he has been AWOL since at least April:
Spitzer said the last time she saw Kilburn was in March. Spitzer said she had previously heard about Goodier, who was involved in a relationship with Kilburn. The two, said Spitzer, had been traveling together for a while. The family, said Spitzer, found out Kilburn was AWOL sometime in April, when Kilburn’s base commander contacted the family in an attempt to find him.
Kilburn is currently being held at the Orient Road Jail in Tampa. The military said in a press release Tuesday that Kilburn will be handed over to Army authorities and Goodier, a civilian, “will face charges pending a decision by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
Here’s a local TV report from the scene from the Tampa Bay Fox affiliate:
(This story has been updated since it was published.)
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