(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department has announced the arrest of a North Carolina man charged with leveling threats against a Jewish house of worship last week in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel.
“I am going to take every one of you out in a way,” Jeffrey Scott Hobgood allegedly said in an email to the Jewish organization on Oct. 11, according to court documents. “You will beg for your life … you semite pieces of **** – will be annihilated.”
Even after law enforcement contacted him following the first email, Hobgood proceeded to send a second threatening message to the same organization two days later, prosecutors say.
“Guess what happens to traitors? … Public execution. … We are at war. … If you think you semite pieces of **** are going to win, then you are delusional,” he allegedly wrote, court documents show.
Hobgood has not entered a plea, and he has no attorney listed in court documents.
Hobgood’s family members had previously reported to law enforcements threats that they say he allegedly made against them in the past year as well, according to his arrest affidavit.
The FBI released data on Monday showing that anti-Jewish hate crimes increased by more than 37% in 2022 — the second-highest number on record and the highest number in almost three decades. There were a total of 11,634 criminal hate crime incidents motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity in 2022, according to the data.
At least 1,400 people have died and 3,400 others have been injured in Israel since Hamas launched an unprecedented incursion from air, land and sea on Oct. 7, Israeli authorities said.
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