A Washington State man faces terrorism charges linked to bombing at a fertility clinic in Palm Springs and died on a balcony inside a Los Angeles federal detention facility, according to sources familiar with the incident.
Daniel Park, 32, found no response at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, officials said.
The Los Angeles County medical examiner has not announced the confirmed cause of death. Two sources, who had no right to discuss the death, told The Times that the collected information showed Parker climbing up a surface and then jumping off a high balcony, fatally hurting himself. TMZ.com first reported the cause of death.
“Response to employees taking life-saving measures, requiring emergency medical services as life-saving measures continue,” a statement from the Justice Department said. “Mr. Parker was transported to a local hospital by EMS and was subsequently announced by the hospital staff.”
No one else was injured, and no further details were immediately made about the cause of death.
Park has been in federal custody and has been accused of providing material support to terrorists since the arrest of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York this month.
He is accused of helping Guy Edward Bartkus fix 270 pounds of ammonium nitrate, an explosive precursor that can be used to build homemade bombs.
DMV photos of Daniel Park.
(FBI)
Bartkus, 25, was suspected of detonating a bomb at the U.S. Reproductive Center on May 17, killing himself and injuring four people. The explosion created a debris field at 250 yards.
A few days after the explosion, authorities said Parker left the United States for Europe. Polish law enforcement eventually detained him and deported him back to the United States, where he was detained upon arriving in New York. The FBI affidavit says Parker tried to hurt himself when he faced Polish authorities. Parker made his first appearance in a federal court in Brooklyn and was then transferred to Los Angeles.
Parker was charged in January with delivering about 180 pounds of ammonium nitrate and later paid another 90 pounds of chemicals within the days before the Palm Springs attack.
We atty. Park spent two weeks in late January and early February, visiting Bartkus at Twentynine Palms, said Bill Essayli, the Supreme Attorney for the United States in Los Angeles. Three days before Parker arrived at his home, Battercus studied how to use ammonium nitrate and fuel for a powerful explosion, according to federal criminal lawsuits.
Park has a similar ideology to Bartkus and posted information about those ideologies in Internet forums from 2016 to 2016, said Akil Davis, an assistant director of the FBI in Los Angeles.
FBI case investigators, as well as law enforcement sources, describe Battercus’s characteristics as having an idea of “anti-primitiveism.”
“They don't believe people should exist,” Davis said.
Davis said a search warrant at a park residence in Kent, Washington, after the explosion led to agents identifying his role in the explosion.
Davis said six packets of ammonium nitrate were transported from the park in Seattle to Butterx. He said officials are awaiting the results of an analysis of explosive precursor chemicals.
The FBI described the functionality of the Palm Springs Blast, enough to damage buildings in several blocks, which was probably “the biggest bombing scene we encountered in Southern California,” eclipsed, with a 2018 SPA bombing exploded at Aliso Viejo in 2018.
