MATTHEWS, N.C.–A North Carolina man has been arrested for threatening to kill Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
On March 9 at 12:10 p.m. an intern in Blumenthal’s Hartford office answered the phone. The caller asked to speak to the senator, but the intern told the man that Blumenthal wasn’t available. The caller then verbally checked that the intern could hear him and said, “Tell Senator Blumenthal that if he raises my taxes one cent, just one penny, that I will kill that [expletive.] I will shoot his [expletive] brains out.”
The intern asked the man for his name and zip code, but he hung up. The intern immediately called the U.S. Capitol Police.
The intern was able to describe the man’s voice as sounding raspy and older, possibly in his 60s or 70s.
Capitol Police used the phone records to get an address connected to the phone number, and determined the call came from Rowland Edwin Dodge Jr.’s home in Matthews, North Carolina.
Police interviewed Dodge at his home on March 10, and determined he is a white man, 62 years old with a raspy voice. Dodge confirmed that the phone number connected to the call was his landline, and that he was the only one home at the time of the call.
Police asked Dodge if he called Blumenthal’s office, and he replied, “From Connecticut?” When the officers said they never mentioned where the call was made to or which state was the senator’s, Dodge said he frequently watches C-SPAN and knows all of the senators from each state.
Dodge said he couldn’t remember calling Blumenthal’s office. The FBI applied for an arrest warrant on March 14, and arrested Dodge and charged him with threatening a federal official.
