A grand jury indicted two people on federal charges related to a 2022 attack at an office building belonging to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center’s general contractor, officials said.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday announced the charges against Katie Kloth, 39, and Tyler Norman, 42, saying they “allegedly launched explosives” at a Brasfield & Gorrie office site in Cobb County. The May 12, 2022 attack damaged the construction firm’s property and was aimed at intimidating its employees, the DOJ said.
The company helped build the police and fire training center that opened in 2025 after opponents waged numerous protests and clashes that turned violent at times.
The DOJ described the two accused in the Cobb incident as “out-of-state” agitators, saying Kloth is from Colorado and Norman is from Wisconsin.
“The law does not protect, and the Department of Justice will not tolerate, organized acts of violence or targeted intimidation,” U.S. Attorney Theodore Hertzberg said in a statement. “Criminal agitators who travel to this district to engage in such conduct will be prosecuted and held accountable, even years after the fact.”
Neither Kloth, Norman nor attorneys listed for them in a separate case immediately commented on the matter.
The federal charges are just the latest attempts to prosecute activists over incidents connected to the training center.
The two were also indicted in April by a Cobb County grand jury after Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr pushed for charges related to the same construction company incident. In that case, both face two counts of criminal damage to property in the second degree and a count of arson on lands. A third defendant, Hannah Kass, also faces those same charges in Cobb.
All three are scheduled to be arraigned in that case later this month, according to court records.
In an earlier news release, Carr alleged Kloth, Norman and Kass were members of “Defend the Atlanta Forest” which he described as “an anarchist, anti-police and anti-business extremist organization.”
Kass denied the existence of “Defend the Atlanta Forest” as an organization in an email to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and said she and Norman, with whom she shares two lawyers, have demanded a speedy trial in Cobb. She called the charges “bogus.”
Carr previously tried to bring a racketeering case against 61 people, including Kloth, Norman and Kass, but that effort stalled when a Fulton County judge said Carr did not have the authority to bring the charges. The state appealed the order dismissing the RICO charges, and that case is now pending in the Georgia Court of Appeals.
On Friday, a spokesperson for the Office of the Attorney General of Georgia echoed the DOJ, which said the state agency as well as Cobb police “provided substantial assistance” to the investigation that led to the new federal charges.
In that federal case, officials said both Kloth and Norman are charged with maliciously damaging or attempting to damage property used in interstate commerce by means of fire and an explosive, and they are also charged with using fire and explosives to intimidate and interfere with Brasfield & Gorrie employees during and incident to a civil disorder. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney declined to say why Kass is not also facing federal charges.
A representative for Brasfield & Gorrie said the company is aware of the recent charges, but declined to comment on legal proceedings.
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