GRANTS PASS, Oregon - A federal judge has denied bail to an Oregon man authorities fear may have been plotting a sniper attack on a high school football game.
U.S. District Judge Owen Panner ruled Friday that 26-year-old Raphael Amoroso of Grants Pass poses a danger to the community and could well flee before his trial on firearms charges in March.
Amoroso, a self-employed handyman, was arrested in October outside Grants Pass High School hours after a football game. He had been drinking and smoking marijuana and had a loaded pistol in the car.
Panner said Amoroso has shown a pattern of escalating behavior since high school, when he wrote on a desk that he wanted to shoot teachers, and later fired a pellet rifle at a jet boat on the Rogue River.
