Would-be bomber sentenced

A Virginia man who admitted to trying to have a Wake Forest mobile home park blown up was sentenced Friday to more than nine years in federal prison.

Ronnie Wayne Pegram, 41, of Chesterfield, Va., pleaded guilty last October to soliciting an undercover officer to blow up the Ponderosa Mobile Home Park. The park is located off Capital Boulevard south of the Wakefield Commons shopping center.

Pegram lived at the park for nearly three years and ran his Internet business from a mobile home parked there.

Initially, Pegram was a good tenant, park co-owner Rusty Kelley has said. But when residents complained about video cameras mounted on his trailer, Pegram began a campaign of harassment against Kelley, his brother, Billy, and at least one other tenant.

Pegram called authorities incessantly, reporting the Kelleys for any number of purported infractions. He contacted several newspapers, including The Wake Weekly, in an effort to get the publications to help him discredit the brothers.

According to U.S. Attorney Michael C. Wallace, Pegram approached one of the Hopewell (Va.) Police Department's confidential informants sometime last year, asking her to help him find someone "to do some work for him."

The man the informant found, Wallace said, thought Pegram "crazy" and refused to do as he asked. When Pegram requested the informant's help a second time, she put him in touch with an undercover police officer.

Pegram gave the officer a homemade map indicating areas he wanted targeted, Wallace said, and asked the officer to "level this place so no one can ever use it again."

When the undercover agent asked Pegram about the potential for injuring children at the park, Pegram was nonchalant. He had "no problem with it," Wallace said, since the bombing would take place at night when everyone was asleep.

Rusty Kelley, one of Pegram's targets, attended Friday's sentencing. "I felt real comfortable with what he got. At least he's going to have to pay Š for the threats he made."

Pegram's attorney tried several tactics to lessen his client's sentence. Not only did he assert that Pegram was curious, not serious about hiring a bomber, he also argued Pegram was under the influence of the painkiller OxyContin and other prescription medicines.

The wannabe bomber's sentencing was then delayed from last month after his attorney requested he undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Wallace said the evaluation showed no "diminished capacity," meaning Pegram was capable of understanding what he had done.

In addition to the 109 months in prison, Pegram was sentenced to four years supervised release and given a $100 special assessment. Wallace called the assessment a federal excise tax given all convicted felons.