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    • Man accused of shooting up Tempe campaign office stole 2022 election signs
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    Man accused of shooting up Tempe campaign office stole 2022 election signs

    Online Niel Posted on

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    Two years before an Ahwatukee Foothills man was charged with terrorism for posting homemade political signs with bags of white powder falsely labeled as poison attached to them, community members said they knew he had the potential for political violence .

    Jeffrey Kelly was arrested on Wednesday and accused of shooting up a Democratic Party campaign office in Tempe and posting signs with sharp blades mounted and white-power bags strapped to their backs. Federal agents found an arsenal of weapons in his home.

    Officers said Kelly was showing a pattern of escalation. When he was pulled over, according to court documents, he had weapons in the car and was potentially about to commit another politically motivated act.

    Residents of the Ahwatukee Foothills community spoke at a meeting with the Phoenix Police Department, criticizing officers for not taking their concerns more seriously in 2022. That year, Kelly had been caught stealing political signs for a Democratic candidate for a legislative seat in state.

    Wednesday’s meeting, a regularly scheduled meeting between police and residents, was dominated by concerns about Kelly’s actions in 2022.

    “It shouldn’t just be boys will be boys and crazy people will be a crazy thing,” said Paul Weich, a Phoenix attorney seeking a state House seat in 2022.

    Weich hired a private investigator who discovered that Kelly was guilty of destroying and stealing campaign signs.

    Cmdr. Phoenix Police. Rick Leyvas, who said he was not the case officer at the time of the 2022 sign incident, said the department tracked Kelly: “I’m not going to tell you how they tracked him,” Leyvas said at the meeting, “but I’m telling you that the tracking was done.”

    Weich is running for state representative on a Democratic ticket in the 12th Legislative District in 2022. After finding shredded pieces of his campaign signs at the entrance to his district following the constant theft of his campaign signs, Weich hired an investigator to catch the culprit.

    According to Weich, the investigator found surveillance video catching Kelly in the act. Weich alerted Phoenix police to that incident at the time.

    Police filed misdemeanor charges on one count of theft and one count of forging political signs, but a Phoenix prosecutor chose to dismiss the case.

    Kelly was accused of shooting three times at the Democratic Party campaign office in Tempe. The first shot used BB guns to break a glass window and door, authorities said. The next two shootings, spaced a few weeks apart, used live bullets. It all happened around midnight when the office was empty.

    Tempe police released a photo of a silver SUV captured on surveillance video and asked the public for tips.

    Tempe Police Chief Ken McCoy said the department received tips from people who recognized the SUV as similar to the one driven by Kelly in 2022. Officers then began surveillance of Kelly, McCoy said during a conference call of Wednesday’s press.

    Detectives watched Kelly leave his home around 11 a.m. Tuesday night and begin posting political signs around the Ahwatukee Foothills area, court documents said.

    After Kelly returned home, detectives inspected the marks and found some had blades used in a utility knife embedded in the edges, court documents said. Some also had bags of white powder taped to their backs and a crude message indicating the substance was poison, the documents state.

    Police and federal agents stopped Kelly the next afternoon as he was leaving his home. He had several guns in his vehicle, according to the documents, and did not bring his cell phone. Authorities said that could indicate he doesn’t want his location tracked.

    A prosecutor said during the trial that Kelly was about to “do something” and that the stash of 120 guns found at his home suggested he was preparing for a mass casualty event.

    A lawyer for Kelly denied the allegations during his trial and said Kelly collected the guns as a “sportsman”.

    Weich said Kelly’s acts of vandalism should have been resolved as early as 2022.

    “Its handling of 2022, or its mishandling, is what led us to this week’s incidents,” he said.

    Cliff Mager, another community member, said residents continued to monitor Kelly through his social media accounts. What they saw, Mager said, made it clear that he would commit more crimes against Democrats if given the chance.

    “He was getting more and more aggressive,” Mager said. “It became known, and that information was handed to the police on a silver platter.”

    Most of the participants refused to go on the record with The Republic, citing fear of inviting revenge on Kelly or similar individuals, but they seemed united in their description of what they considered Kelly’s political extremism.

    He was described as quiet and intense. Some neighbors said they knew he owned guns but mistook him for a hobbyist.

    Weich said if anything positive came out of this it was the possible recognition that acts like the vandalism of political signs should not be ignored.

    “The threat to our democracy and our elections is real,” he said. “I hope it has awakened some people to the fact that such things should be taken seriously.”

    Online Niel
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