ST. LOUIS, Aug. 12 (UPI) -- A lawyer says he will seek probation for a St. Louis-area woman who admitted possessing a hand grenade back when she was still a man.
Rachel Amratiel pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to charges of possession of an unregistered live grenade stemming from a 2007 domestic dispute that took place prior to her sex change.
Attorney Matthew Radefeld told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he would argue for probation at the October sentencing hearing. He noted Amratiel was still appealing the legality of the search in which Jefferson County authorities discovered the grenade and 17 firearms.
Amratiel was arrested by sheriff's deputies who answered a call in House Springs that Thomas Hibdon, as she was then known, was threatening his then-wife with a spear and a sword. Hibdon was pepper-sprayed and subdued.
By the time a federal indictment was issued, Hibdon had undergone a sex-change and changed his name to Rachel Amratiel.
Amratiel also will be getting a bill for the equipment the bomb squad lost in detonating the grenade.
