A woman died after police in Georgia received an email from a Russian IP address claiming that the sender had left a bomb in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s mailbox.
A police officer responding to the incident hit another car, killing its driver, the Republican congresswoman confirmed on X.
“I’m heartbroken right now,” Greene wrote.
The deputy police chief of the Rome Police Department received an email on Monday titled “For Palestine” that said the messenger had made a pipe bomb using “1×8-inch threaded galvanized pipe, end caps, a cooking timer, some wire, scraps of metal. and homemade black powder.”
“It will go away within the weekend but it will explode again the next time anyone opens the mailbox,” said the specific threat, shared by Greene in a press release. “Even if Marjorie didn’t open the mailbox, I’m still satisfied with the hope that some police officers will lose their lives or be injured. LIVE LIVE PALESTINE [SIC].”
The bomb squad quickly responded and confirmed that the mailbox was empty. It was the ninth time Greene had been “shot,” when 911 calls were made to spark a large police response, the spokesman said.
But the situation took a turn for the worse when one of the officers responding to the threat made the trip to Greene’s home, local TV station WRGA and Atlanta News First reported.
A Rome police officer with the Floyd County Bomb Squad driving a pickup truck, a GMC Sierra, hit a Mazda Protégé that was pulling out of a private lot, according to reports. The driver of the Mazda, 66-year-old Tammie Pickelsimer of Rome, was taken to the hospital and later died of her injuries. The officer, who has not been identified, was not injured.
“These violent political threats have deadly consequences,” Greene wrote onX.
Greene said his prayers were with Pickelsimer’s family and the officer involved, and that his office is working with local and federal law enforcement — including the FBI — to catch whoever sent the bomb.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Rome Police Department for comment.