SAN ONOFRE, Calif., Jan. 9 (UPI) -- A California man was arrested late Tuesday on charges of possessing illegal weapons and making terrorist threats against employees at a nuclear power plant.
Authorities said they believe the threats were personal in nature and were not aimed at the plant.
"The threat is directed at employees and supervisors at the plant," Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said Wednesday. "He had said that he had a lot of guns and was going to come back and shoot them."
The suspect's name was not released. He was arrested in Laguna Niguel, a few miles north of the San Onofre nuclear plant located on the border between Orange and San Diego counties.
A search of the suspect's home and a storage room he had rented in San Juan Capistrano yielded nearly 250 guns and more than 4,000 rounds of ammunition. Orange County sheriff's deputies said they were continuing their search for evidence at dawn Wednesday.
Investigators said the 43-year-old man was fired from his job as a pipe fitter at San Onofre a few weeks ago. He allegedly made several subsequent phone calls to the plant in which he threatened revenge against his former co-workers and supervisors. Investigators said they did not know why the suspect was fired.
San Onofre is jointly owned by Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and provides power to the Los Angeles and San Diego areas.
"After the attacks on Sept. 11, security has been tightened at ... all nuclear power plants," Amormino said. "The security at San Onofre is extremely tight. Their security department acted swiftly and appropriately by notifying authorities right away. If he was going to in fact do this, we took away all of his means to accomplish that."
During a search of the storage room, two deputies were exposed to an unidentified yellow substance that gave them breathing difficulties and watery eyes, Amormino said. The deputies were treated at a nearby hospital.
