{Louisville, Kentucky}...Ted Schlenker of Louisville, a former Kentucky Department of Corrections employee who owned Kentucky Gun Runners, a gun shop in La Grange, until January 2011, waived a federal detention hearing set for Monday after being arrested Saturday and charged with knowingly depositing a firearm in the mail and mailing a threatening communication to a federal law enforcement officer. Authorities say he mailed a 9 mm pistol and a threatening letter to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent Dan Volk in Bowling Green who was overseeing an investigation into an explosion in which Schlenker was a suspect. Schlenker first came to the attention of the ATF in January 2010, when a hand grenade hidden under an orange traffic cone injured 21 year old Clarissa M. Tackett, the stepdaughter of Phillip Brierly, a senior captain at Roederer Correctional Center in LaGrange, where Schlenker worked. ATF Agent Kevin Funke wrote in an affidavit that Volk had been sent the pistol along with a note making reference to "getting a better gun if you want this to look like a suicide." Funke wrote that agents traced the gun to Schlenker and found writing on a notepad similar to the note at his home.
