An Elmhurst man was fired from his job as a paralegal at the Queens District Attorney’s office after he was arrested and criminally charged late last month for threatening to bomb a migrant shelter across the street from his home on 77th Street just south of Roosevelt Avenue.
Derek Klever, 27, was arrested by police from the 110th Precinct in Elmhurst after they executed a search warrant at his apartment at 40-37 77th St. a day after they learned of his plot to bomb the Kamway Lodge, a hostel at 40-36 77th St., that the city converted to temporarily house asylum seekers.
Klever was arraigned on Sept. 26 in Queens Criminal Court on a complaint charging him with making a terroristic threat, criminal possession of a weapon in the first degree, and other related crimes.
The investigation was launched after Klever had the temerity to brag about the plot at the same courthouse in Kew Gardens on Sept. 21. A witness told detectives that Klever had told him, “These Goddamn migrants are having a party at eight in the morning. I’m going to f***ing blow them up, bro.” according to the criminal complaint.
He further discussed with the witness his plans to purchase fireworks in Pennsylvania and combine them with nails, tubes containing gasoline, and other materials, including gunpowder and nail gun cartridges, to create improvised explosive devices. “I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but it’s for Queens County. This is war,” Klever allegedly told the unnamed witness. “I wish I had a big enough one to blow them back to Venezuela.”
The witness also told NYPD detectives that Klever said, “They should live in terror and fear every day” and “I used to let off a couple of rounds at them by the window, but that’s not enough.”
Klever told the witness he kept the bomb-making materials hidden behind toys in the bedroom of his 1-year-old and 2-year-old children and that he planned on getting a heavy-duty drone to fly the device across the street and drop in on the shelter, according to the complaint.
“This needs to stay between us,” Klever told the witness. “You need to shut up about this.”
The witness did not comply with his demand and instead alerted the NYPD. Deputy Inspector John Portalatin, the commanding officer of the 110th Precinct, and some of his officers went to Klever’s apartment on the night of Sept. 24, and his fiancé gave her consent for them to enter. They found one BB gun in front of a dresser, in what appeared to be the children’s bedroom, and various fireworks inside a closet.
They returned the following night with a search warrant and found more incriminating evidence, including a black substance wrapped in tin foil hidden in a vase along with long nail cartridges wrapped in tin foil. According to a detective with previous bomb squad experience, the black substance was determined to be the explosive content of disassembled fireworks. He concluded that the recovered explosive content, nail cartridges in tin foil, and green wrapping wire could be combined with other materials to create an explosive or incendiary bomb.
Klever was taken into custody and booked at the 110th Precinct, where he was also charged with endangering the welfare of a child. Klever pleaded not guilty to the charges during his arraignment on Sept.26 before Queens Criminal Court Judge Julieta Lozano.
The Queens DA’s office requested Klever be remanded into custody, but bail was set at $50,000 cash/$150,000 bond.
“An employee was arrested and terminated,” Queens DA spokesman Brendan Brosh said. “The investigation is ongoing.”
New York Immigration Coalition president and CEO Murad Awawdeh urged the city’s elected officials to lower the anti-migrant rhetoric that has been prevalent after the shelter system was overwhelmed with more than 200,000 asylum seekers in the last two years.
“We are disgusted to hear about the alleged plans of an employee of the Queens District Attorney’s office to detonate a bomb at a shelter for asylum seekers and the xenophobic comments he allegedly said about his neighbors,” Awadeh said in a statement. This deplorable situation should serve as a lesson to Mayor Adams and all public officials that anti-immigrant rhetoric can incite anti-immigrant violence — violence that threatens all New Yorkers.”
