Seminole County man arrested for threatening ex-girlfriend with explosive device
On April 18, 2025, the SCSO Hazardous Devices Team responded to 1268 Wellington Terrace in Maitland about a suspicious item inside the residence.
Detectives on the scene served the homeowner, 22-year-old Ian Rogers, with a Temporary Risk Protection Order and searched the residence.
SCSO located the suspicious device, which was described as a black plastic container with orange wires wrapped around it and tape around the lid.
During the investigation, deputies discovered Rogers had threatened to blow up his ex-girlfriend's car on FaceTime.
Investigators met with the ex-girlfriend and were informed that she and Rogers dated for approximately a month.
During the relationship, she realized he was becoming verbally and mentally abusive towards her, and she ended the relationship. Due to her ending the relationship, Rogers began harassing her and threatening to kill himself.
Due to threatening his own life, she agreed to FaceTime Rogers. During the FaceTime, Rogers brandished an unknown container with a wire wrapped around it and threatened to blow up her car.
On April 25, 2025, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Special Agent Bomb Technician started a month-long lab analysis of the suspicious device.
Based on the ATF lab analysis, it was determined that Rogers made an explosive device capable of causing property damage, injury, and or death to persons nearby.
Rogers was placed under arrest and booked into the Seminole County Jail.
Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Hill
16 hours ago
- The Hill
Kansas City mayor: Takeover threats not ‘making anyone safer'
The mayor of Kansas City, Mo., cast doubt on the effectiveness of President Trump's crime crackdown in Washington, D.C., and argued the tactics being used are 'not a solution for anyone.' 'I think what most reasonable people would say is there are certainly situations where help could be a great thing for America's cities,' Mayor Quinton Lucas (D) said in a CNN interview Wednesday morning. 'But threats of takeovers — just sending hundreds of forces, troops in some ways, into America's cities — is not something that's making anyone safer, particularly if you think about what a lot of our urban violence is.' Lucas, who has been a vocal advocate of stricter gun laws, said much of the violent crime in major cities is retaliatory and gun-related, rather than random street crimes. 'Bringing National Guard forces or making FBI agents come out of their usual investigative detail and walk around parks in your community is actually not a solution for anyone,' he said. Trump declared a public safety emergency Monday and announced he was seizing control of the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Force (MPD) and deploying hundreds of Nation Guard troops. The announcement ramped up the D.C. crimefighting tactics Trump launched over the weekend by sending in officers from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies. The president has repeatedly suggested that he may try similar methods in other cities with high crime rates — particularly ones led by Democrats — like Lucas's. 'I don't think mayors have ever said we'll refuse federal help — indeed, we've worked with the ATF, the FBI, on investigations for years,' the Kansas City mayor said. 'Usually, you need folks to help you get guns off the streets, to do investigations on crime guns so you can actually get the evidence to convict people. That is collaboration.' Lucas said he thinks that Trump may be motivated by politics, rather than safety. 'What they're doing now, I think it is a political stunt, and that's what you'll continue to see as he looks to other cities,' he said. '[Trump]'s not really interested in trying to save lives for us, but just exploiting the political issue.' The Hill has reached out to the White House about Lucas's remarks. The administration has pushed back on suggestions from other Democratic mayors who have criticized Trump's moves.


New York Post
18 hours ago
- New York Post
How was a subway hijacking teen arrested 12 times and let go by judges 5 times in just a year? Toxic empathy
Empathy can be toxic. Judges let 18-year-old subway hijacker Justine Randall-Pizarro go, not once, not twice, but five times this calendar year in an apparent bid to show mercy. But all they've really done is allow a clearly troubled teen to rack up a rap sheet of more than a dozen arrests this year, cause havoc on the transit network, inconvenience commuters and harass already overworked MTA employees. Randall-Pizarro was busted for commandeering a locked N train at 4am in June, wearing a black hat and Crocs, then driving it one stop from the Broadway station in Astoria to 36th Avenue. 'I went to Broadway, and behold – there was a lay-up train there. Still on FaceTime with my homeboy, so I drove it while I was on FaceTime with him,' she told investigators. 'And, I don't know, we was just fooling around, turning up on FaceTime like while I was driving it.' 5 Justine Randall-Pizarro has been arrested a dozen times in just 2025. facebook/ebelliousQueenTina A teen wandering the streets at 4am and hijacking subway cars is begging for help. Clearly something is very wrong on an individual level. Not to mention, she poses a massive danger to herself and others. That joy ride easily could have collided with another train. And this isn't even her first go around. Why was she out and about? NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told The Post Randall-Pizarro, who is transgender and listed on all paperwork as female, has been arrested twelve times… just in 2025. The Post was able to confirm 17 total arrests since September of 2024 when she turned 18. 'This person is basically a transit recidivist who keeps breaking into trains,' he said. 'When she breaks into them, she moves them, she steals items – train keys, things of that nature.' 5 Randall-Pizarro allegedly took over an N train and went for a joy ride. Christopher Sadowski All these arrests appear to be in vain. Every time the police nab Randall-Pizarro, the justice system seems hellbent on letting her go with a slap on the wrist. On June 23, she entered a train cabin and allegedly stole a female conductor's bag. Prosecutors asked for $20,000 bail or a $60,000 bond, but a judge released her on her own recognizance. On June 1, she supposedly took control of a different train in Brooklyn. For that, a $25,000 bail or $50,000 bond was requested. Yet again a judge set her loose on supervision. On May 26, she was accused of pepper spraying an MTA worker in the face on board an R train. And yet again she was granted a supervised release, in spite of a request for bail. 5 Randall-Pizarro was let go on supervised release and on her own recognizance by several judges. facebook/ebelliousQueenTina And, again, in a May 15 case that saw her supposedly steal a backpack from a motorman's cabin with keys and an MTA escape mask, a request for a mere $2,000 cash or $4,000 bond was denied, and a supervised release was once again granted instead. In yet another April case involving a stolen backpack containing MTA keys and an MTA radio, a judge denied a request for supervised release and instead let her go on her own recognizance. Assistant District Attorney Olivia Mittman has also said in court they have video of Randal-Pizarro subway surfing on the top of a train. How has she not been banned from the transit system? What a waste of police time and resources. What an unnecessary ongoing menace to MTA workers (what ever happened to the promise 'assaulting MTA New York City Transit subway personnel is a felony punishable by up to 7 years in prison' written on signs all over?) How much travel has she personally disrupted? And what a disservice to Randall-Pizarro herself. An 18-year-old should not be enabled to produce such an extensive criminal record in her first year of adulthood. There's really no justification for this suffocating leniency. 5 Randall-Pizarro says she found an idle subway car at the Broadway station in Astoria. Wikipedia There should be consequences for your actions, and opportunities to learn from them. Unfortunately, the only lesson learned here is: do what you want, and even if you get caught, and it won't catch up with you. Especially since the pandemic, our culture has adopted an all-out hostility towards the justice system and consequences being doled out as they are intended by law. We've been told that crime is the product of social constructs and systems of oppression, and that it is merciful to shield its perpetrators from any consequences. 5 Justine Randall-Pizarro's cases will all be consolidated into one, according to the DA. facebook/ebelliousQueenTina But it's plain to see this utopian world where crimes are forgiven and everything is fine and dandy is simply a fantasy. Recidivism is real, and consequences are what keep a society from succumbing to lawlessness. On August 5, Randall-Pizarro was arrested for skipping out on a court appearance and hauled before court, where all her cases are now consolidated into a charge of felony burglary and misdemeanor reckless endangerment. Her bail was set at $50,000 and she is being held in the women's jail at Rikers. The court has also ordered a mental health evaluation, after an earlier one expired. Toxic empathy has allowed Randall-Pizarro to continue this self-destructive spiral. And it also put MTA workers and innocent travelers at unnecessary risk, too. Hopefully finally facing justice and getting help will be the wake up call she needs.


The Hill
2 days ago
- The Hill
Body of missing teen found in Florida after he texted mom for help
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA / WNCN) —A body found near a Florida retention pond is confirmed to be that of a teenager who went missing last week while visiting family. According to the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, preliminary evidence collected from the scene has identified the body as 18-year-old Giovanni Pelletier. The teen's family also confirmed the identification on social media. Pelletier, of Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, was last seen walking away from a vehicle along Interstate 75 in Manatee County on Aug. 1, prompting a statewide search for the teen. On Friday, law enforcement located the body in a retention pond at the southbound off-ramp of I-75 and State Road 70. Pelletier was visiting Florida to meet up with 'his father's side of the family,' Jeremy Brown, the teen's stepfather, told Nexstar's WFLA. He was excited to go, but texted his mother, Bridgette Pelletier, shortly after leaving with his cousins. 'He was picked up by three cousins that came from Mims, [Florida],' volunteer and licensed private investigator Shelley Croft explained to WFLA while the search for Pelletier was ongoing. 'He wanted to kind of get to know that side of the family that he does not know. They had only communicated via text messages and FaceTime calls. They came down here to Englewood, picked him up, and 21 minutes after he left the home, he sent his mom a text message that said 'Mom help me.'' Those cousins told Charlotte County deputies that as they were heading north on Interstate 75, Giovanni began acting erratically before getting out of the car and walking away. They said this happened in the area near State Road 70 in Manatee County. Later that night, Giovanni texted his mother and other family members. His cellphone and backpack were ultimately located in the same area he had last been seen. 'I am living every parent's worst nightmare, trying to find the strength to give him the goodbye he deserves,' Bridgette wrote on Facebook, according to Nexstar's WNCN. An autopsy is scheduled for Sunday. The cause of death is still unknown.