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Ex Boeing Employee Charged With Bomb Threats

Federal authorities say they found more than 100 guns at the home of a former Boeing worker charged with sending bomb threats to some of the company's top executives.

SEATTLE (AP) -- Federal authorities say they found more than 100 guns at the home of a former Boeing Co. worker charged with sending bomb threats to some of the company's top executives.

A grand jury returned a 16-count indictment Thursday against 46-year-old Gino Augustus Turrella, charging him with making threats and identity theft. He was arrested Tuesday.

Turrella worked as a flexible machine operator in Auburn from August 1987 to August 2005, Boeing spokeswoman Kelly Donaghy said. Turrella was scheduled for a detention hearing Friday in U.S. District Court.

On May 2 and 4, Turrella sent e-mails to a Boeing server threatening to shoot up a Boeing building in Auburn or, alternatively, strap himself with explosives, FBI Special Agent Chad Piontek wrote in a federal complaint.

"I'm going for maximum death and destruction in the work place!" Turrella allegedly wrote.

One e-mail was addressed to several top Boeing executives, including Scott Carson, chief executive of the company's Commercial Airplanes division; Pat Shanahan, general manager of the 787 program; and Robert J. Pasterick, Commercial Airplanes chief financial officer.

Turrella used an e-mail address that appeared to belong to his former manager and he signed the e-mail with his former manager's name, the agent wrote.

The investigation into those threats -- as well as similar threats sent later that month to the Shell oil refinery in Anacortes -- allegedly uncovered a long history of threatening behavior by Turrella that had previously come to the FBI's attention.

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