A Sand Springs man who called in fake reports of a planned bombing at a Tulsa courthouse to try to avoid court proceedings in a domestic-violence case has been sentenced to a year in federal prison, authorities announced Tuesday.
Randy Paul Shelby, 41, also was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Claire Eagan to three years of post-custody supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tulsa announced Tuesday.
Shelby called the Tulsa Police Department’s nonemergency number twice in July to report the planned bombing at the Tulsa County Courthouse as a way to halt proceedings in a protective-order case against him, U.S. Attorney Trent Shores’ office said.
“Randy Shelby didn’t want to face the consequences for his alleged acts of domestic abuse,” Shores said in a press release. “So he phoned in a bomb threat to stop the related court proceeding at the Tulsa County Courthouse.
“He then made a bad situation worse when he tried to frame another man as the potential bomber,” he added. “This series of incredibly bad and criminal choices landed Shelby in federal court, where today he learned that he will spend the next 12 months in federal prison.”
On the evening of July 7, an unidentified caller reportedly telephoned the Tulsa Police Department’s nonemergency number at 11:12 p.m. and said a member of the “Bandidos” motorcycle club had been making bombs. The caller said he had been to the man’s house, where he saw the bombs, the press release from Shores’ office states.
The caller told police that the man planned to detonate a bomb at the Tulsa County Courthouse at 11 a.m. the next day.
A person placing a second anonymous call to the Tulsa police nonemergency number just before 1 a.m. July 8 said he had seen a person sitting in a white pickup showing others a PVC pipe with caps on both ends and what looked like a fuse, court records state.
The caller reportedly told police it looked like a bomb and described the man in the pickup.
Investigating officers determined that Shelby had made the telephone calls and ascertained that he did so to stop the court proceeding related to an emergency protective order that had been issued against him.
That emergency protective order had been granted to a woman and child in Tulsa County District Court on June 24, and a hearing in the case was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. July 8, records show.
At a plea hearing in the federal bomb case in November, Shelby admitted that he was the caller, said he knew that the information he had provided to authorities was false, and said he understood that it was illegal to make a false bomb threat, court records state.
