From NBC-4 (Washington DC)
A man left a hoax explosive device at a mosque last week in Falls Church, Virginia, Fairfax County fire investigators say.
Chester H. Gore, 27, was charged with using a hoax explosive device on Thursday at the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center on Row Street, off Leesburg Pike.
Gore, who has no fixed address, caused an estimated $200 damage to a gate at the mosque, officials said. He was charged with using the device, possession and use of illegal fireworks, entering the property of another for the purpose of causing damage based on religious conviction, and destruction of property.
According to the mosque’s outreach director, Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, an intruder tried to enter the iron fence around the mosque about 2 a.m. Thursday and threw two smoke bombs and a Molotov cocktail toward the building. Members of the mosque who live in the neighborhood saw him, confronted him and he left, Abdul-Malik said.
“You need to go back to where you came from” and “you need to accept Jesus,” that man said, according to Abdul-Malik.
The men who encountered Gore were acquainted with him, according to a Fairfax County police officer who spoke with the Falls Church News-Press, and “were concerned that something was going to happen to the mosque.”
