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    • Man accused of shooting Tempe campaign office stole 2022 election signs
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    Man accused of shooting Tempe campaign office stole 2022 election signs

    Harry Posted on

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    Two years before an Ahwatukee Foothills man was charged with terrorism for posting homemade political signs containing bags of white powder with poison mistakenly attached to them, community members said they knew he had the potential for political violence.

    It was Jeffrey Kelly Wednesday was arrested and was accused of shooting at a Democratic Party campaign office in Tempe and posting signs with sharp knives attached and white power bags attached to the back. Federal agents found an arsenal of weapons in his home.

    Officers said Kelly showed an escalatory tendency. Court documents say he had a gun in his car when he was stopped and had the potential to commit another politically motivated act.

    Residents of the Ahwatukee Foothills community spoke out at a meeting with the Phoenix Police Department, criticizing officers for not taking their concerns more seriously in 2022. That year, Kelly was caught stealing political signs for a Democratic candidate for a state House seat.

    A regularly scheduled Wednesday meeting between police and residents was dominated by concerns about Kelly’s actions in 2022.

    “It shouldn’t just be boys who are boys, and it shouldn’t be nuts who are nuts,” said Paul Weich, a Phoenix attorney who is seeking a seat in the state House in 2022.

    Weich hired a private investigator, who identified Kelly as the culprit who destroyed and stole campaign signs.

    Phoenix police Cmdr. Rick Leyvas, who said he had no case representation at the time of the sign incident in 2022, said the department continues to monitor Kelly. “I’m not going to tell you how they surveilled him,” Leyvas said at the meeting, “but I will tell you that there was surveillance.”

    Weich was running for state representative in the 12th Legislative District in 2022 as a Democratic candidate. After his campaign signs were repeatedly stolen, Weich found shattered pieces of campaign signs at the entrance of his neighborhood and hired an investigator to catch the culprit.

    According to Weich, the investigator found surveillance video that captured Kelly in the act. Weich alerted Phoenix police to this incident at the time.

    Police filed misdemeanor charges for one count of theft and one count of defacing a political sign, but the Phoenix prosecutor chose to dismiss the case.

    Kelly was accused of shooting three times at the Democratic Party campaign office in Tempe. Authorities said that in the first attack, BB guns were used to break the glass window and door. Real bullets were used in the next two shootings, which occurred weeks apart. This all happened in the middle of the night while the office was empty.

    Tempe police released a photo of a silver SUV from surveillance video and asked the public for tips.

    Tempe police Chief Ken McCoy said the department received tips from people who noticed the SUV was similar to the vehicle Kelly drove in 2022. Officers then began surveilling Kelly, McCoy said at Wednesday’s news conference.

    According to court documents, detectives watched Kelly leave his home around 11 a.m. Tuesday night and begin posting political signs in the Ahwatukee Range area.

    After Kelly returned home, detectives examined the signs and found blades used in a utility knife jammed in the edges of some, according to court documents. Some also had bags of white powder taped to the back and a crude message saying the substance was poison, according to the documents.

    Police and federal agents stopped Kelly as he left his home the next afternoon. According to the documents, he had several weapons in his vehicle and did not bring his cell phone with him. Authorities said this may indicate that he did not want his location to be tracked.

    The prosecutor said at his trial that Kelly could potentially have been on his way to “do something” and that the 120 guns found in his home suggested he was preparing for a mass shooting.

    Kelly’s attorney denied the charges during his trial and said Kelly collected the guns as a “sportsman.”

    Weich said Kelly’s acts of vandalism should be addressed in 2022.

    “The handling or mishandling of this issue in 2022 led to the events of this week,” he said.

    Cliff Mager, another member of the community, said residents continue to follow Kelly through social media accounts. Mager said what he saw made it clear he would commit more crimes against Democrats if given the chance.

    “He was becoming increasingly aggressive,” Mager said. “It was recognized and that information was presented to the police on a silver platter.”

    Most participants declined to speak on the record to The Republic, citing fear of being invited to take revenge on Kelly or like-minded individuals, but they appeared to have a shared view of what they saw as Kelly’s political extremism.

    He was described as quiet and intense. Some neighbors said they were aware he owned a gun but understood him to be a hobbyist.

    If a positive outcome comes from this, Weich said, it would be a possible recognition that actions such as damaging political signs should not be ignored.

    “The threat to our democracy and our elections is real,” he said. “Hopefully it has woken up some people to the fact that these things need to be taken seriously.”

    Harry
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