A South Carolina man has been charged with a hate crime after allegedly defacing buildings at Shalom Park, the center of Charlotte’s Jewish community, with Nazi symbols and other threats, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Friday.
Dalton Ray Mullis, 24, of Indian Land, South Carolina, was arrested Thursday and appeared in federal court on Friday. Mullins remained in federal custody after the hearing, officials said.
“Posting Nazi and lynching symbols on the Jewish Community Center is pure hate and it’s disgusting,” U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson said in a statement. “This is America, which was founded on the free exercise of religion and people ought to be free to worship without being threatened.”
According to the indictment, Mullis defaced the Holocaust memorial, Charlotte Jewish Day School and an administrative building in Shalom Park with flyers depicting a noose, a swastika and a Totenkopf, or “death’s head,” a symbol historically associated with the German Nazi Party and SS.
After the January incident, officials say Mullis made antisemitic posts on social media, including a picture of one of the flyers left at Shalom Park. The caption of that post read, “Oops…one of our members left something at a Jewish community center!” and tagged the location as Charlotte.
In a message to the community on Friday, the Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte said the event was meant to intimidate.
"For many in our community, the presence of antisemitic symbols on a campus that serves Jewish children, families, and organizations was deeply painful and disturbing. While the materials were removed quickly, their impact on many members of our community lasted far longer," the group wrote.
