By ,
Published January 13, 2015
The suspected pipe-bomber arrested at a Florida airport Tuesday worked in Iraq for a private contractor but didn't serve there with the U.S. Army, FOX News confirmed Thursday.
Kevin Brown, a Jamaican national who was arrested at Orlando International Airport with pipe bomb-making supplies in his luggage, worked in Iraq for Lear Siegler International, a Georgia-based supplier of veterans with technical skills needed in the war zone, FOX News has learned.
He was in Iraq from June 2007 to mid-December 2007.
Brown's military records do not show that he never served in Iraq with the U.S. Army, nor that he was released for medical reasons, Army spokesman Paul Boyce told FOX News.
In a statement to the FBI, Brown said he wanted to fly to Jamaica with the pipe-bomb components, assemble them there and "show friends how to build explosive devices like the kind he saw in Iraq."
In addition, Jamaican media reports have been indicating that Brown's true motive may have been revenge for his mother's 2005 murder. The woman, Sandra McLeod, was a hotelier found strangled in one of the rooms of her hotel. Three men were arrested for the crime and are currently facing prosecution there. Friends in Jamaica and former in-laws in the U.S. told the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper that Brown was devastated after McLeod's death.
Click here to read the Jamaica Gleaner report.
FOX News's Phil Keating contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/records-suspected-bomber-never-served-with-army-in-iraq-murdered-mother-may-be-motive