Boston - Russian Man Arrested Outside John Kerry’s House

WASHINGTON – A Russian man from West Roxbury, Massachusetts was arraigned in a Boston court Monday, hours after he was detained in an intoxicated state by police outside the home of US Secretary of State John Kerry, where he was taking pictures, the Boston Police Department (BPD) and court officials said.

Police were called to Kerry’s home in Boston’s upscale Beacon Hill neighborhood Sunday after State Department security officers reported that a man was “taking several pictures of the windows outside” the residence, the Boston Police Department said in a statement. 

Kerry was not home at the time of the incident.

A police officer was quoted by the CBS television station in Boston as saying the suspect, who has been identified as 29-year-old Vladimir Romanov, produced a Russian ID card when police asked him for identification.

Romanov was released Monday on his own recognizance on charges of drinking in public but was ordered held without bail to answer separate charges in nearby Quincy of assault with a dangerous weapon and in Waltham of driving while intoxicated, Jessica Bonsignore, who works in the clerk’s office at the Boston Municipal Court, told RIA Novosti.

Romanov is scheduled to return to the Boston courthouse on September 25 for a pretrial hearing on the charges stemming from his arrest outside Kerry’s home, she said.

At the time of his arrest, Romanov was “unsteady on his feet, with glassy eyes and the smell of alcohol emanating from his breath,” the BPD said.

Police searched Romanov’s car and found an open container of alcohol as well as a pellet gun, three mobile phones, a GPS navigation system, and a black canvas bag containing several CO2 cartridges, Boston police said. All of the items were seized as evidence, according to the police statement.