A Brooklyn man was indicted on federal arson charges Thursday after allegedly throwing an “explosive device” into a Verizon work van during a violent road rage altercation, prosecutors said.
Kevindale Nurse, who was arrested Thursday morning, is accused in an indictment unsealed in Brooklyn federal court of setting a van on fire and injuring two Verizon employees on Jan. 31, while his 4-year-old son was a passenger in the vehicle. the prosecution said in a press release..
“The defendant committed the outrageous act of using explosives during a road rage incident, disregarding the potentially deadly consequences by throwing the explosive into the vehicle next to him,” ATF Special Agent in Charge Brian Miller said in a statement.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, Nurse was driving a white “dollar van” “erratically” in Crown Heights when he passed a Verizon vehicle.
According to prosecutors, after Nurse witnessed his father’s young son, who was in the minivan, lose his cool, he pulled up next to a work van at the intersection of President and Brooklyn Streets and “threw an explosive device into the driver’s side window of the Verizon van.”
The explosive device detonated inside the van, leaving two mechanics with “multiple injuries” and the vehicle suffering “extensive explosive damage.”
Nurse, who was arrested by the NYPD, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Tuesday, federal authorities said.
“There is no place in a civil society for spreading terror through intimidation, violence and vandalism,” NYPD Police Commissioner Edward Cabana said in a statement.
If convicted, he faces up to 40 years in prison.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn said prosecutors plan to ask a judge to hold Nurse without bail.
