A Santa Maria man pleaded guilty on Monday to detonating a bomb at a Santa Maria courthouse in 2024 with the intent to kill law enforcement officers and a judge for taking away his guns earlier that year.
On Sept. 24, 2024, Nathaniel James McGuire, 22, threw a backpack with a bomb inside of it into a Santa Maria courthouse past security and toward Santa Barbara sheriff’s deputies, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California.
The backpack slid between a victim’s legs and exploded outside of a courtroom, which injured three people and damaged the courthouse.
In federal court on Monday, McGuire pleaded guilty to one count of use of a weapon of mass destruction and one count of malicious destruction of a building using an explosive.
“Using violence to persuade others is never the answer,” said Patrick Grandy, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “Innocent lives were put at risk when this brazen act of domestic terrorism was perpetrated.
McGuire has been in federal custody since September 2024.
U.S District Judge Jesus G. Bernal scheduled a sentencing hearing for March 1, 2027, where McGuire will face a maximum sentence of life in federal prison.
McGuire also intended to kill sheriff’s deputies and a judge with two long guns and 10 Molotov cocktails.
A courthouse security guard and police officers stopped McGuire before he could grab his weapons from his car, the news release said.
Authorities later seized other bomb-making materials from McGuire’s home.
