A Texas teenager has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for setting fireplace to a synagogue in Austin greater than two years in the past in an antisemitic assault.
Nineteen-year-old Franklin Sechriest pleaded responsible to hate crime and arson costs in April and was additionally ordered to pay $470,000 in restitution for setting the fireplace, federal prosecutors introduced on Wednesday.
Sechriest, of San Marcos, beforehand admitted he set the Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue on fireplace on 31 October 2021 “due to his hatred of Jews”.
Journals obtained by authorities helped join {the teenager} to the assault. On the day of the incident, he wrote, “I set a synagogue on fireplace”. In a earlier entry, he mentioned he went to the synagogue three days earlier than the incident to “scout out a goal”.
When he visited, he sat within the car parking zone exterior of the spiritual establishment’s sanctuary, officers mentioned.
In one other entry dated days after the assault, Sechriest additional defined how he was maintaining with media reviews to trace the progress of the arson’s ongoing investigation.
Warning tape marks the entrance doorways at Congregation Beth Israel on 1 November 2021, after fireplace on the synagogue in Austin, Texas, the day prior to this.
(Austin American-Statesman)
Officers mentioned the person individually owned decals and stickers with antisemitic messages.
Surveillance footage from the night time of the incident caught Sechriest carrying a five-gallon container and bathroom paper towards the synagogue’s sanctuary.
Shortly after, a fireplace was noticed coming from that route, in accordance with the information launch. Sechriest was noticed jogging away from the scene towards an open driver’s facet door of a automotive, officers mentioned.
Warning tape marks the entrance doorways at Congregation Beth Israel on 1 November 2021, after fireplace on the synagogue in Austin, Texas, the day prior to this.
(Austin American-Statesman)
When he’s launched from jail he may also have to hold out three years of supervised launch.
“This hate-filled act of violence in opposition to a home of worship as an try and sow worry within the Jewish neighborhood and was meant to intimidate its congregants,” Assistant Lawyer Normal Kristen Clarke of the Justice Division’s Civil Rights Division mentioned.
“Assaults concentrating on Jewish folks and arsons geared toward desecrating synagogues don’t have any place in our society in the present day.”
#Texas #teen #jailed #years #hate #crime #arson #assault #synagogue
Read more on independent