Update, 4/9/2019:

The judge has ordered Rondell Henry held without bond pending his trial.

Original:

Federal authorities are accusing a Maryland man of plotting to commit a terrorist attack on National Harbor with a stolen U-Haul truck, according to court documents. Prosecutors are asking that the defendant, Rondell Henry, be detained as a flight risk and a danger to the community pending his trial.

So far, authorities have only charged Henry with interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle, though the motion for his detention suggests more charges could be forthcoming.

Prosecutors allege that Henry has directly admitted to many of his plans, as well as to his “hatred” for “disbelievers” in the ideology espoused by ISIS and similar terrorist groups. He allegedly revered deadly terrorist attacks carried out in the name of the Islamic State over the last several years, and made a plan to emulate the one carried out in Nice, France, in 2016, according to court documents. In that attack, a terrorist drove a large car into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day, killing 86 people.

Henry allegedly walked off his job as a computer engineer in Germantown, Maryland on March 26, 2019 with the intention to carry out such an attack, prosecutors said. He drove around in his sedan searching for a large vehicle to steal, according to court documents, and eventually came upon the U-Haul. He reportedly “tracked it to its storage location” in Alexandria and stole it. Police were tipped off when Henry allegedly left his car in the same Alexandria parking garage where he stole the U-Haul, ABC News reports.  Henry threw his phone away on a highway “in attempt to destroy evidence of the inspiration behind his attack,” court documents state.

In the stolen U-Haul, Henry then allegedly drove around looking for places he could attack. Early in the morning on March 27, 2019, Henry allegedly arrived at Dulles International Airport, but did not find a crowd large enough for his plan. He tried to gain entrance to the airport on foot, planning to harm people waiting for flights, but he couldn’t get past Dulles security. After two hours of trying and failing to breach security, Henry allegedly got back in the U-Haul and drove to National Harbor.

Court documents quote Henry as saying that he wanted to create “panic and chaos” at the scene. His plan was allegedly to die in the attack. “I was just going to keep driving and driving and driving. I wasn’t going to stop,” the documents quote Henry as saying.

Henry allegedly walked around National Harbor on foot trying to decide on a place for the attack. He planned to wait for more sizeable crowds, and hid in a boat overnight, documents say.

By the next morning, police had found the stolen U-Haul and were waiting for its thief to return. Officers arrested Henry when he jumped over the security fence from the boat dock that morning, according to the court documents.

The federal government now wants Henry to be held in custody pending his trial.