FBI wanted terror suspect as informant, grandma says

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Within the past two months, a New Yorker arrested earlier this week talked several times with an FBI informant about his willingness to carry out a terrorist attack, according to the criminal complaint filed against him.

But Emanuel Lutchman's role could have been reversed. The FBI contacted the 25-year-old Rochester man in the fall to recruit him as an informant, said Lutchman's grandmother, Beverley Carridice-Henry, who lives in the Tampa area.

He posted some complaints about the system on Facebook while on parole that apparently caught the FBI's attention, Carridice-Henry said Friday.

"When he got out, they interviewed him and asked him to be an informant" about people who might attack in the United States, she said. "He said he wouldn't be an informant because he didn't know anyone who would do something like that, so how could he inform."

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She didn't know the exact nature of what Lutchman posted on Facebook and his profile was not searchable Friday. An FBI representative declined Friday to comment on that claim or any other aspect of Lutchman's case.

Lutchman, who is married and has a 2-year-old boy, was arrested Wednesday and charged with providing material support to terrorists.

Before he was arrested, he used his informant's cellphone to make a video in which he swore allegiance to the Islamic State and claimed responsibility for a planned New Year's Eve attack on a Rochester bar. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Carridice-Henry raised Lutchman after his mother died when he was an infant, she said. She cared for him in New York City and Florida before he moved to Rochester at age 13 to be closer to his mother's side of the family.

In a telephone interview Friday, she fought back tears to describe a different side to the 25-year-old man who could face decades in prison.

"He was the sweetest, most affectionate, loving child," she said. "To him, I was his world.

"He called me his mom," Carridice-Henry said. "He was a happy child. Everybody loved him."

Even before moved Rochester as a young teen, Lutchman had been diagnosed with mental illness and was receiving medication and twice-a-week therapy, Carridice-Henry said. He struggled to focus in class and never graduated from high school.

When Lutchman was young, he was struck by a car, an accident that Charma Lutchman, his former stepmother who lives in Rochester, said transformed him from a boisterous happy-go-lucky boy to a more withdrawn child.

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"He wasn't the same boy I knew after he got hit by a car," she said Thursday. But "he was a good kid, so I don't know what happened between now and (his youth)."

Emanuel Lutchman's father, who is divorced from Charma Lutchman, now lives in Syracuse, N.Y., and could not be reached for comment.

When Emanuel Lutchman was 16, he was arrested here after robbing a man of a cellphone, baseball hat, bus pass, library cards and cigarettes. He pleaded guilty to second-degree robbery and was sentenced to five years in prison.

He converted to Islam in prison. His grandmother said he did that because another inmate had attempted to rape him and he needed protection.

"They sent him away to a prison with all adults and hard criminals," Carridice-Henry said, crying. "That's where they put a 16-year-old. ... All he wanted was to come home."

He received a full complement of medications for his mental health issues in prison but still attempted suicide on multiple occasions, Carridice-Henry said. He depended on his grandmother to put money in his account so they could talk on the phone two or three times a week.

Emanuel Lutchman was released on parole supervision in 2010. In the next three years, he was returned to prison three times, records show.

He was released Christmas Eve 2013, having completed the maximum time his sentence allowed for parole supervision.

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One time after Emanuel Lutchman left prison, he visited his grandmother in Florida for a week. She was stunned to see the number of medications he was taking — and troubled when she realized he sometimes didn't take them.

"He got very agitated and he shut down" when he was off his medications, she said. "He'd take (them). Then he wouldn't take them because he didn't think he needed them, back and forth, back and forth. ...

"I tried talking to him, but he talks when he wants to," Carridice-Henry said. "When he doesn't, he says, 'I'll call you back.' "

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Emanuel Lutchman's son was born in late 2013, a week after he left prison. Carridice-Henry said he was unable to cope with the stress of maintaining a wife and child with no job.

With no high school diploma and a felony conviction, he had few opportunities.

"He was frustrated," she said. "He can't get no job; he can't buy Pampers for his son. He went around and begged from his friends because his wife wanted money to take care of the baby and he wasn't working.

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"He got very emotional and sick about that when he couldn't (care) for his wife and son," his grandmother said. "And when he got that way — oh, God help him."

Carridice-Henry said her grandson was hospitalized for suicide attempts at least three times in the past several months, including once when he stabbed himself in his other grandmother's kitchen. It was during that period that she said the FBI tried to recruit him as an informant.

The morning he was arrested, Emanuel Lutchman called his grandmother and told her he was planning to go pray with a friend from the mosque, then see another friend who did T-shirt printing to try to learn the trade himself.

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She and her family do not believe Emanuel Lutchman actually intended to carry out an attack. They believe FBI agents coerced him.

"I'm not going to say he's a saint, but the thing about him is he'd meet somebody and they were automatically his friend," she said. "And I told him, 'Not everyone you meet is your friend.' But to him they were.

"Whatever went down, the family is sorry," Carridice-Henry said. "We do not support radical Islam. We don't. We're sorry for what happened. But they sent this guy to befriend him and set him up in a sting."

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Carridice-Henry has not spoken with her grandson since his arrest, she said. But she is confident that he will call her when he can.

"He always calls me because I'm the one who will accept his calls (from prison), because no one else will pay to talk to him on the phone," she said. "And I have to sacrifice to make sure there's money for that. But he needs to hear a human voice, someone who loves him. I'll never turn my back on my grandson."

Contributing: Gary Craig and Brian Sharp, Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle. Follow Justin Murphy on Twitter: @CitizenMurphy