At 9:02 a.m., Timothy McVeigh detonated a 4,800-pound ammonium nitrate bomb packed into a rented Ryder truck outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people, including 19 children at a daycare center, and injuring hundreds more. It remained the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history, committed exactly two years after the fiery end of the Waco siege that had radicalized McVeigh.
McVeigh parked the rented Ryder truck outside the Murrah Building's daycare-facing side just before 9 a.m., lit the fuses, and walked away. At 9:02, the blast tore off the building's entire north face, collapsing floors onto workers below and killing 168 people, including 19 children in the America's Kids day care center on the second floor. Rescue workers spent weeks combing the rubble; the search for the last body took 17 days.
McVeigh, a decorated Gulf War veteran radicalized by grievances including the 1993 Waco siege — he had visited the site during the standoff — chose the date deliberately, marking its second anniversary. He and accomplice Terry Nichols had built the bomb from agricultural fertilizer and fuel oil, following instructions partly inspired by the racist novel "The Turner Diaries."
McVeigh was arrested within 90 minutes of the blast, pulled over for driving without a license plate, and was quickly linked to the bombing through a truck axle fragment bearing a vehicle identification number. He was executed by lethal injection in 2001. The bombing shattered American assumptions that terrorism was a foreign threat and prompted sweeping changes to federal building security nationwide. A memorial with 168 empty chairs now stands on the site, one for each victim, including a row of smaller chairs for the children.
Key people: Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols