Olympia man charged in attack on trees

By Jeremy Pawloski | The Olympian • Published July 26, 2008

OLYMPIA – An Olympia waiter and reported member of the Earth Liberation Front was being held Friday in the Federal Detention Center at SeaTac after being charged this week with causing $500,000 in damage to research trees at a U.S. Forest Service facility in Wisconsin in 2000.

Bryan Rivera, aka Bryan Lefey, aka "Rat Dog," 31, is charged in an unsealed indictment filed in the Western District of Wisconsin with one count each of depredation of government property in excess of $500 and depredation of government property in excess of $1,000.

FBI agents served Rivera with an arrest warrant at his home in the 500 block of East Bay Drive Wednesday, FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs said. An official at the Federal Public Defender office in Tacoma confirmed Rivera was being held Thursday, but U.S. Marshals would not confirm it until Friday. Rivera's public defender could not be reached for comment.

During the arrest, four loaded weapons, including a shotgun, were recovered, court papers state.

The owner of the property, Shelton dentist Duane Stephen Moore, who also lives there, released a statement to prosecutors saying the firearms are his. The statement says Rivera had no knowledge of the guns.

"Bryan Lefey (Rivera) has not had access to any of they (sic) guns nor there location," Moore's statement reads. "From my knowings, he is an extremely honest, gentle man who hasn't, to my knowledge, even handled a gun, nor has talked about them."

In Moore's statement, he says that Rivera's "character is such, of being a very kind, gentle, sensitive man who has no interest in firearms or hurting anything. He is a man of integrity and his word."

Two other members of ELF also were charged in connection with the July 2000 vandalism at the Rhinelander, Wis., facility.

Katherine Christianson and Aaron Ellringer will appear in a federal courtroom in Wisconsin on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Wisconsin said.

Christianson and Ellringer also were charged with two counts of depredation of government property.