Plainview man arrested with makeshift bomb sentenced in federal court

A federal district judge recently handed down a three year-sentence to a 61-year-old man arrested last year after police in Plainview found an improvised bomb in his vehicle.

U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix sentenced Clavin Wade Padgett to 37 months in prison during a July 8 sentencing hearing.

Padgett pleaded guilty in March before U.S. Magistrate Judge D. Gordon Bryant to a count of possession of an unregistered firearm and faced up to 10 years in federal prison.

As part of his plea deal, a charge of making and possessing an unregistered destructive device will be dismissed.

Padgett, who has been in custody since his Sept. 28 arrest, addressed the court and described the past 10 months as the most traumatic of his life.

More:Court records: Plainview man built pipe bomb to 'see if it would work'

"I would have never been involved in anything like this," he said. "I was not meaning any malice at all and I would never have jeopardized my life like this knowing what I know now."

His charge stems from a Plainview police investigation into reports that Padgett built a homemade pipe bomb. Police there spent about nine hours searching for him and he was finally spotted about 12:50 a.m. near the intersection of Utica Avenue and 20th Street.

A search of his vehicle yielded a homemade bomb containing gunpowder and shrapnel, said Plainview Police Chief Derrick Watson during a news conference the day of Padgett's arrest.

Watson said during the conference there was no known continuing threat or risk posed from the situation.

But he declined to elaborate on a potential motivation or the nature of the initial investigation that led his department to Watson, citing the pending investigation.

The investigation

Court documents state that during the stop, Padgett described the device in his vehicle and told police he built it "to see if it would work." However, he told officers he didn't have a detonator for the device.

Meanwhile, investigators searched Padgett's home and found a rifle equipped with a silencer made of a "flashlight body containing a series of baffles constructed from washers with steel and PVC spacers," according to court documents.

"This type of silencer typically reduces the sound of a shot being fired, and being a device for silencing, muffling, or diminishing the report of a portable firearm, is a 'firearm silencer,'" the document states.

The silencer resulted in the charge to which Padgett pleaded guilty.

The silencer bore no identification marks nor was it registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record.

Court documents state Padgett admitted the silencer was his and it was operational.

An officer with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives tested the silencer and found it softened a gunshot by 25.58 decibels, the documents state.

Padgett's attorney Wade Iverson told the court during the sentencing hearing that his client had been cooperative since police stopped him in Plainview. He said his client bought property abandoned in storage units and often tinkered with items he bought, which included the rifle and silencer.

"He didn't build it," Iverson said.

During the hearing, Hendrix said he believed that a golf club head that Padgett drilled into and filled with ammonium nitrate, oil and a firecracker was a bomb.

Iverson argued that the contraption shouldn't be considered as a destructive device since the hold on the golf club head was never sealed or affixed with a blasting cap, which would make it explode.

However, Hendrix said he believed the makeshift explosive met the legal classification of a bomb.

"That's the whole point of this thing," he said.

The addition of the second improvised bomb in Padgett's case resulted in a sentencing guideline that recommended a sentencing range of 46-57 months in prison.

Hendrix told Padgett he found his conduct posed a danger to the community. He said he was also concerned about Padgett's criminal history, which included arrests for disorderly conduct, assault causing bodily injury, discharging a firearm and theft of a firearm.

"Thus far I don't see a lot of respect for the law," he said.

However, Hendrix told Padgett he would honor the government's earlier agreement with Padgett, which didn't factor in the golf club head bomb, and applied a downward variance, which led to the 37-month sentence.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Plainview man arrested with makeshift bomb sentenced in federal court