Marine pleads not guilty to explosives charges

A Marine who allegedly tried to bring live military ordnance onto a plane at Palm Springs International Airport pleaded not guilty to a felony charge Monday morning at the Larson Justice Center in Indio.

Steven Corey Vella, 21, was stationed in Twentynine Palms. Vella is charged with one felony count of unlawfully possessing a destructive or explosive device in a prohibited area for allegedly trying to board a March 4 flight from Palm Springs to New York with ground burst simulators, smoke grenades, a dummy hand grenade and an inert mortar body, according to court documents.

A preliminary hearing lasted about one to two minutes where Vella in his Marine uniform only gave responses to ‘yes’ and ‘no’ questions from the judge.
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/894593413269434369″,”author_name”:”Jeremy Chen”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;20 yr old Marine Steven Corey Vella pleads not guilty. He’s accused of trying to bring explosives onto a flight in &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/PalmSprings?src=hash”&#gt;#PalmSprings&#lt;/a&#gt;. &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/VJWHuib738″&#gt;pic.twitter.com/VJWHuib738&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– Jeremy Chen (@JeremyChenKESQ) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/894593413269434369″&#gt;August 7, 2017&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″} The items, some of which are used to simulate explosions, were allegedly found in Vella’s luggage by Transportation Security Administration personnel. He was initially given a misdemeanor citation and released, according to an arrest warrant declaration. Vella’s attorney declined to comment on the court proceedings. Vella is slated to return to the Indio courthouse on Sept. 20 for a felony settlement conference. He remains free on $10,000 bail.