A 43-year-old man arrested Wednesday in connection with an ongoing investigation into improvised explosive devices set around Kula and Kahului will make his initial appearance in federal court on Monday.
Jess Kiesel Lee will come before U.S. Magistrate Judge Rom A. Trader at 10:30 a.m. after he was charged by federal criminal complaint Tuesday with being a felon in possession an “explosive that has been shipped or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce” and “maliciously damaging, by means of explosives, property affecting interstate commerce” on Aug. 7.
Lee was arrested by officers with the Maui Police Department as part of the probe run by MPD and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jonathan D. Slack and Wayne A. Myers are prosecuting the case. Lee’s attorney is Audrey L.E. Stanley.
On Aug. 7, around 4:45 p.m., MPD officers encountered “multiple improvised explosive devices” near Kaamana Street in Kula.
“MPD determined that multiple IEDs had been detonated along the roadway at that location,” according to an affidavit authored by an FBI agent.
One of the detonated IEDs was built with a “pipe, attached to a guardrail, and detonated.”
That detonation appeared to have caused “considerable damage to the guardrail” and the vicinity. After rendering the IEDs that were found safe, MPD officers sent the explosives to the FBI Laboratory for analysis, according to the criminal complaint.
FBI personnel trained in analysis of explosives determined the IEDs were “firearms that contained explosive and incendiary material capable of causing destruction by explosive force.”
The IEDs did not appear to have been “crafted as weaponized devices,” but were capable of creating “explosive and/or hazardous outcomes.”
FBI lab technicians found one of Lee’s fingerprints on the adhesive side of masking tape on one of the functioned IEDs recovered from Kaamana Street in Kula, which was located about 15 to 25 feet from the damaged guardrail.
The IED is believed to contain a “mixture of strontium carbonate, aluminum, and a component consistent with potassium perchlorate,” according to preliminary analysis from FBI Laboratory.
The FBI agent wrote that that aluminum and potassium perchlorate can form flash powder, an explosive, and that no company manufactures and assembles flash powder in Hawaii.
Lee has more than 30 citations and arrests at the state level, including felony convictions for assault and terroristic threatening. Lee lives a five- to 10-minute drive away from where the explosive device allegedly carrying his fingerprint was found.
On Aug. 28 investigators obtained information from “Company A, an online retail company that sells pyrotechnic chemicals and supplies” that included Lee’s shipping and email address as part of his customer account.
Lee’s arrest is the second to result from the joint MPD and FBI investigation into a series of IEDs left on Maui, one of which detonated and damaged a sport utility vehicle.
On Aug. 13, 47-year-old Robert Francis Dumaran, of Kahului, was ordered held without bail by a federal magistrate judge after he was arrested Aug. 10 on a federal warrant alleging that he possessed “an unregistered destructive device and attempting to damage property by means of explosives.”
On July 23, Maui Police Department officers encountered an improvised explosive device near Lono Avenue in Kahului in the roadway by Kahului Elementary School.
The IED contained explosive powder, a battery and shrapnel, and Dumaran’s fingerprints were allegedly found on the device.
Maui police found detonated IEDs near Kaamana Street in Kula on Aug. 7 and after the explosion of an IED that took out a white Kia SUV in Pukalani on Aug. 8.
Dumaran was not charged in connection with either of those events.
