January 16

On this date in 2002 a white 17-year-old Shiloh High School senior, Michael Keith Bargeron, is alleged to have tried to intentionally strike Keishuna Young, 15, an African-American female in Snelville, Georgia with his car. According to police, Bargeron yelled racial slurs at Ms. Young and a friend of hers as he drove by them in his car in the east Atlanta suburb that was, in 2002, about 90% white. He is then alleged to have turned around and to have attempted to ram her with his car. Jumping onto the hood of Bargeron's car to avoid more serious injury, Ms. Young sustained minor injuries in the incident, and Bargeron was jailed on aggravated assault charges. Media reports have said that Bargeron was likely to have been the first person charged with Georgia's then new hate crimes law—a law which was struck down in 2004 by the Georgia Supreme Court for being too vague. On November 15, 2001, Keith Bargeron was sentenced five years on probation and was ordered to attend boot camp.

James Allen Nichols, 28, was charged on this date in 2007 with the murder of a 30-year old Hmong man in the woods near Green Bay, Wisconsin. The two were apparently hunting and allegedly began arguing. Mr. Nichols had reported that Mr. Cha Vang shot him without provocation. The Hmong community in Wisconsin has questioned whether the slaying of Vang was a hate crime. On October 6, 2007, Nichols was convicted of second degree intentional homicide.

In Georgetown, Delaware, on this date in 2008, John Hudson, 63, was arrested and held in lieu of bail for allegedly using racial slurs and making threats toward two tenants of the Briggs Apartment Complex from where Hudson was being evicted. The alleged incidents are said to have occurred from January 12-16, 2008.

In Sacramento, California, on this date in 2009, a transgendered woman, Brenda Torres, 20, was attacked inside the tunnel between Old Sacramento and the K Street Mall by two black men who shouted transgendered slurs at her. She was assaulted with a beer bottle and robbed. There were eyewitnesses, but apparently none of them called the police or intervened. Police investigated the attack/robbery as a hate crime. Ms. Torres was previously the victim of another transgender-based hate crime; in that case, her perpetrator was sentenced to prison.

In Brookhaven, Mississippi, on this date in 2009, just four days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama, a white Wisconsin man, Steven Joseph Christopher, 42, was arrested by the Secret Service and was charged with threatening to assassinate the 44th President of the United States for what Christopher claimed was "the country's own good." Christopher—who was charged with knowingly violating a domestic abuse restraining order in February, 2008 out of Walworth County, Wisconsin—is alleged to have made the threats directed at Obama on January 11, 2009, and on January 15, 2009, on an Internet website about UFOs and extraterrestrial aliens (www.alien-earth.org), and to have cyber-begged for bus fare to the Janaury 20, 2009 presidential inauguration. In one of his internet postings Christopher allegedly wrote: "It’s not because I’m racist that I will kill Barack, it’s because I can no longer allow the Jewish parasites to bully their way into making the American people submit to their evil ways."

In the Rancho Penasquitos neighborhood of San Diego, California, beginning on this date in 2011 and going until the morning of January 17, 2011, two white males—said to be about 18 to 19 years of age according to witnesses—spray-painted 14 cars on Gainsburough Avenue and Adobe Bluffs Drive, the Black Mountain Middle School, the Sunset Hills Elementary School, and a wall and a sign at the entrance of Hilltop Community Park with swastikas and the numbers “666.” Police did not investigate the vandalism as a hate crime, however, asserting that the victims were randomly chosen. What was not, however, randomly chosen was the use of swastikas, a symbol which has been used to intimidate Jews and to a lesser extent people of color.

On this date in New York City in 2012 police arrested a Jewish man living in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, David Haddad, 56, for allegedly committing a string of anti-Semitic hate crimes since December 2011 in the New York City area. Haddad, who is a building manager, allegedly scrawled “All Jews Should Die” on the apartment door of a Jewish woman, Susan Levin, who lives down the hall from him on Eighth Avenue; Haddad also allegedly scrawled swastikas and anti-Semitic messages on four other apartment doors on the floor where he lives. On December 11, 2011, David Haddad also allegedly repeatedly called his 80-year-old mother at her home in Brooklyn and threatened her while spewing anti-Semitic slurs. On January 10, 2012, Haddad allegedly called a woman and threatened her at the apartment building where Haddad lives. On January 11, 2012, Haddad allegedly called and threatened an 87-year-old Chelsea woman, and on January 12, 2012, he allegedly called and threatened a 78-year-old Brooklyn woman. Haddad allegedly spewed anti-Semitic remarks during the threatening phone calls to both elderly women. David Haddad was charged with aggravated harassment as a hate crime. Police also suspected Haddad for spray-painting swastikas and the words “Die Jews” on January 14, 2012, on several residences on East Fifth Street and on Avenue L in the largely Orthodox Jewish Midwood neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, and for spray-painting swastikas on the basement stairs of the Yeshiva of Brooklyn Boys School building on Ocean Parkway and Avenue L also in the Midwood neighborhood on January 15, 2012. Haddad was released on his own recognizance by Kings County Criminal Court Judge Linda Poust-Lopez, and New York State Acting Supreme Court Judge Abraham Clott in Manhattan set Haddad's bail at only $2,500.

Just before sunrise in Hilliard, Ohio on this date in 2012, someone set fire to a Muslim family's home in the 4900 block of Britton Farms Drive—a residence that was previously attacked three times with anti-Muslim graffiti, most recently in November 2011 (the first occurance was in 2009). Living at the home at the time of the arson was the president of the Muslim Student Association at Ohio State University, Mohamed Soltan, 24, whose parents own the home. Mohamed Soltan's father, Dr. Salah Sultan, is a radical, virulently anti-Semitic Islamic scholar who has been not only denied U.S. citizenship, he has also been denied reentry into the United States because he advocates violence against the United States. Dr. Sultan, who lived in  Bahrain at the time his home in Ohio was torched, has also called for the deaths of "Zionists" who enter Egypt; and, the Hamas supporter has voiced his belief on television throughout the Middle East that the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2011, were caused by the U.S. government. The FBI was called to investigate the arson, which destroyed the home, as a possible hate crime. If you have any information about this arson, please call the police at 614-334-2317 or the FBI at 614-224-1183.

On this date in 2012 in the 1500 block of Tate Road in Drummonds, Tennessee (Knox County), someone carved the letters “KKK” into the concrete mailbox at the home of Dorothy Campbell. If you have any information about this hate crime, please contact the Criminal Investigations Division at 901-475-3300, phone in your information to 901-475-3007, or email your information to Sheriff@tiptonco.com.