A man from Pittsburgh’s Homewood neighborhood pleaded guilty Thursday to threatening to blow up the federal building in Downtown last year.

Albert H. Morris, 61, pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of making a threat by telephone to destroy a federal building.

He will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman on July 7. As part of the plea agreement, Morris will be ordered to time served, along with three years of supervised release. He remains in custody.

According to investigators, officers were called to the William S. Moorhead Federal Building around 5 p.m. Feb. 1, 2021, after Morris called 911 and threatened to blow up the building.

Morris also called a second time, threatening to blow up the Herbert C. Hoover Building in Washington, D.C.

As a result of the calls, Pittsburgh police set up a perimeter around the federal building, closing down Grant Street and other nearby roads. They also evacuated the federal building, which houses more than a dozen agencies, including the FBI, Veterans Administration, Internal Revenue Service and Army Corps of Engineers.

In addition, bomb-sniffing dogs were deployed.

Police tracked the phone number to a house on North Lang Avenue in Homewood. Morris was on the second floor of the residence and ultimately admitted to police that he made the calls, claiming it was because the government owed him money.

He was taken into custody and released on bond in July, with an agreement that he stay at the Washington City Mission. However, on Feb. 14, the U.S. Attorney’s office asked that Morris’ bond be revoked after investigators said he made a threatening phone call from the mission to the Pentagon, “conveying a threat to kill ‘everybody’ and their ‘families.”

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