Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was a United States federal government complex located at 200 N.W. 5th Street in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. On April 19, 1995, at 9:02 a.m. the building was the target of the Oklahoma City bombing by terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, which killed 168 people and injured 680 others. A third of the building collapsed seconds after the truck bomb detonated. The remains were demolished a month after the attack, and the Oklahoma City National Memorial was built on the site. Construction and use The building was designed by architects Stephen H. Horton and Wendell Locke of Locke, Wright and Associates and constructed by J.W. Bateson using reinforced concrete in 1977 at a cost of $14.5 million. The building, named for federal judge Alfred P. Murrah, an Oklahoma native, opened on March 2, 1977. By the 1990s, the building contained regional offices for the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the United States Secret Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs vocational rehabilitation counseling center, the Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). It also contained recruiting offices for the U.S. military. It housed approximately 550 employees. It also housed America's Kids, a children's day care center. Prior bombing plots In October 1983, members of the Christian militia group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA), including founder James Ellison and Richard Snell plotted to park "a van or trailer in front of the Federal Building and blow it up with rockets detonated by a timer." While the CSA was building a rocket launcher to attack the building, the ordnance accidentally detonated in a member's hands. The CSA took this as divine intervention and called off the planned attack. Convicted of murder in Arkansas in an unrelated case, Snell was executed on April 19, 1995, the same day the bombing of the federal building was carried out, after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas declined to hear further appeal.