Act Daily News
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A person arrested after allegedly firing a reproduction gun a number of occasions in a San Francisco synagogue now faces a hate crime enhancement, the town’s district legal professional mentioned Wednesday.
The hate crime allegation in opposition to 51-year-old Dmitri Mishin is tied to statements he made in the course of the incident in addition to social media posts he made involving “several postings of an individual in Nazi-type clothing,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins mentioned in a news convention.
While officers didn’t share what Mishin mentioned whereas contained in the synagogue, prosecutors imagine he “harbored antisemitic views and that was the motivation for his actions,” Jenkins mentioned. The hate crime allegation will improve punishment tips if he’s convicted, she added.
Mishin was arrested Friday, days after he allegedly stepped inside a synagogue within the Richmond District throughout a gathering and “made a verbal statement,” pulled out what gave the impression to be a firearm and shot a number of occasions contained in the constructing, police have mentioned.
Police recovered expended shell casings on the scene and on the time mentioned they believed he had been firing blanks.
Mishin was charged Wednesday morning with two felony counts of “making threats obstructing exercise of religion,” and 6 misdemeanor counts of disturbing a non secular assembly and brandishing a reproduction firearm, the district legal professional’s workplace introduced.
He faces as much as 10 years in jail if convicted of all prices, in response to Jenkins. Act Daily News has been unable to determine an legal professional for Mishin.
“It is clear that antisemitism is still active and strong even here in San Francisco, in such a diverse place, and it’s something that will not be tolerated by this office or by myself,” Jenkins mentioned.
Mishin was initially scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday however will now be arraigned Thursday, Jenkins mentioned. Her workplace will request he be detained with out bail, she added.
“Anyone who would walk into a synagogue of that sort, and make the statements that he did and displayed what appeared to be a firearm, is somebody who poses a public safety risk,” Jenkins mentioned.
The incident on the San Francisco synagogue got here simply days after a person allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at a New Jersey synagogue amid a backdrop of latest incendiary antisemitic incidents, together with tweets from Kanye West, indicators over a serious Los Angeles bridge and messages projected on buildings in Florida.
The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, which has tracked incidents of US antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault since 1979, discovered 2,717 incidents of antisemitism within the US in 2021, up a big 34% from the earlier yr.
Source: www.cnn.com