Man accused of shooting at Tempe campaign headquarters stole 2022 election signs

Two years before an Ahwatukee Foothills man was charged with terrorism for displaying homemade political signs with attached bags of white powder falsely labeled as poison, community members said they knew he had the potential to commit political violence.

Jeffrey Kelly was arrested on Wednesday and accused of shooting up a Democratic campaign headquarters in Tempe and displaying signs with sharp blades and white power pouches strapped to his back. Federal agents found an arsenal of weapons in his home.

Officers said Kelly showed a tendency to escalate the situation. Court documents say he had a gun in his car when he was pulled over and may have been planning to commit another politically motivated attack.

Residents of the Ahwatukee Foothills community spoke out at a meeting with the Phoenix Police Department, criticizing officers for not taking their concerns more seriously in 2022. That same year, Kelly was caught stealing political signs for a Democratic candidate for a state legislative seat.

Wednesday’s meeting, a regular meeting between police and residents, was dominated by concerns about Kelly’s actions in 2022.

“It shouldn’t just be that boys will be boys and crazy people will be crazy,” said Paul Weich, a Phoenix lawyer who is running for the state House of Representatives in 2022.

Weich hired a private investigator who discovered that Kelly was responsible for the destruction and theft of his campaign signs.

Phoenix Police Cmdr. Rick Leivas, who said he was not an agent on the case during the 2022 sign incident, said the department was keeping an eye on Kelly: “I won’t tell you how they followed him,” Leivas said at the meeting , – “but I will tell you that further actions have been completed.”

Weich ran for state representative on the Democratic ticket in Legislative District 12 in 2022. After discovering shredded pieces of his campaign signs at the entrance to his neighborhood after repeated thefts of his campaign signs, Weich hired an investigator to catch the culprit.

An investigator found surveillance video that captured Kelly at the crime scene, Weich said. Weich then alerted Phoenix police about the incident.

Police filed misdemeanor charges of one count of theft and one count of forging political signs, but the Phoenix prosecutor decided to dismiss the case.

Kelly was accused three times of shooting at the Democratic campaign headquarters in Tempe. The first BB gun attack shattered a glass window and door, authorities said. The next two shootings, within weeks of each other, involved real bullets. It all happened around midnight, when the office was empty.

Tempe police released a photo of the silver SUV taken from surveillance video and asked the public for tips.

Tempe Police Chief Ken McCoy said the department received information from people who recognized an SUV similar to the one Kelly drove in 2022. Officers then began surveillance of Kelly, McCoy said during a news conference Wednesday.

Detectives observed Kelly leave his home around 11 a.m. Tuesday night and begin putting up political signs in the Ahwatukee Foothills area, court documents said.

After Kelly returned home, detectives examined the signs and found that some had knife blades protruding from the edges of some of them, court documents said. Some also had bags of white powder taped to their backs and crude writing stating the substance was a poison, documents state.

Police and federal agents stopped Kelly the next day as he was leaving his home. According to documents, he had several weapons in his car and did not take his cell phone with him. Authorities said this may indicate he did not want his location tracked.

The prosecutor said during the arraignment that Kelly may have been planning to “do something” and that a cache of 120 guns found in his home suggested he was preparing for a mass casualty event.

Kelly’s attorney denied the allegations at his arraignment and said Kelly collected guns as an “athlete.”

Weich said Kelly’s vandalism should have been dealt with in 2022.

“Dealing with this problem in 2022 or mishandling it is what led us to the incidents this week,” he said.

Cliff Mager, another community member, said residents continued to follow Kelly through his social media accounts. What they saw, Mager said, made it clear he would commit more crimes against Democrats if given the opportunity.

“He became increasingly aggressive,” Mager said. “He was reported and this information was handed to the police on a silver platter.”

Most of those present declined to give a formal response to The Republic, citing fear of incurring retribution from Kelly or like-minded people, but they seemed united in their description of what they saw as Kelly’s political extremism.

He was described as quiet and tense. Some neighbors said they knew he had a gun but thought he was an amateur.

Weich said if anything positive comes out of this, it would be a possible recognition that actions like vandalizing political signs should not be ignored.

“The threat to our democracy and elections is real,” he said. “I hope this has made some people realize that things like this need to be taken seriously.”