One of the men facing terrorism charges after arrests in Bridgeport had quit his job as a cook last fall to join the Occupy movement, his uncle said today.
"He can be confrontational," Michael Chase said of his 24-year-old nephew, Jared Chase. "If he's pressed, he tends to lash out. I really can't envision him doing this on his own, coming up with an idea to do something that radical."
Chase and two other men in their 20s are charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism and possession of an explosive or incendiary device, their attorney and police said early Saturday.
The arrests were the result of a month-long investigation into a group suspected of making Molotov cocktails — crude bombs usually created by filling glass bottles with gasoline, according to law enforcement sources and police records obtained by the Tribune.
Michael Chase said he was shocked by the charges.
"I'm not surprised that he's in the protest movement because he's been with it for awhile, but it's a whole different aspect when you start talking about committing acts of terror using anything, and it's really not his style," Michael Chase said. "He's had brushes with the law in the past and bumping heads with the police and so forth.
"It would not surprise me if during an arrest he was charged with resisting arrest, but it's shocking to me that he would be charged with planning to commit an act of terror using any kind of device that would create the kind of havoc that a Molotov cocktail (would cause)."
Jared Chase lived in a tent for a time after joining Occupy and traveled with other members of the movement to Rhode Island, Washington, D.C. and Miami before arriving in Chicago last month, his uncle said.
Jared Chase was not politically active before joining Occupy, so his decision to leave his job for the movement came as a surprise, his uncle said.
"He wasn't involved in any of that stuff before," his uncle said. "He complained about the economy like everybody else, but certainly he wasn't active about doing anything about it. I was a little surprised because he obviously had to quit his job to spend time in the tent, so to speak, and I had to give him a hard time because I thought that was the wrong move."
Michael Chase said his nephew had mentioned one of the other suspects, Brian Church, in recent phone conversations, but not the other suspect, Brent Betterly.
Chase's Facebook page, verified by his uncle, includes a link to a news story about a May Day protest in Chicago with a photo of protesters blocking the entrance to a bank in the Loop. Chase writes on the page that he is pictured in the photo.
In another post, Chase writes that the building where he was staying in Miami with other Occupy members was raided by the FBI and police. The post says he was the only person put in a police car and ends with, "(expletive) you pigs."
