A man in the Indianapolis area who burned a cross and set up a swastika to intimidate his black neighbor in June pleaded guilty to a hate crime and weapons charge on Friday, prosecutors said.
Shepherd Hoehn, 51, who is white, was angry that a neighbor was removing a tree on June 18, the Southern Indiana District Attorney’s Office said. The tree was on the neighbor’s property.
Hoehn then armed and burned a cross in front of the neighbor’s house; used silver tape to create a swastika on his fence; the song “Dixie” exploded on repeat; and displayed a sign with racial slurs, according to a court settlement.
“Hoehn’s hateful and threatening conduct, motivated by racial intolerance, is a blatant crime that will not be tolerated by the Department of Justice,” said Pam Karlan, chief assistant attorney general in the department’s civil rights division, in a statement.
A request for comment from Hoehn’s public defender was not immediately returned on Friday night.
Hoehn has yet to be convicted, but was taken into custody on Friday by federal agents and will be detained, according to court records.
He pleaded guilty to criminal interference with the right to housing and the charge of carrying a gun because he had guns while a regular user of marijuana, which is illegal in Indiana and federally.
“I wanted to make him unhappy,” Hoehn told the FBI about his neighbor, according to a sworn statement.
Hoehn repeatedly denied being racist, but told investigators, “He’s a black man. Perfect opportunity, fine. So, yes. I wrote a lot of racial slanders on a piece of cardboard and put them out there,” according with the document.
The FBI statement also says that Hoehn told the agency that he was upset about Black Lives Matter protests across the country and efforts to remove the statues – an apparent reference to pressure to bring down the confederate statues.
Hoehn was walking around with a gun in his belt on June 18, and some construction workers said they were afraid – one of them avoided turning his back on him, prosecutors said in a detention motion. The neighbor was so scared that he told family members to stay away and slept with a firearm.
A court settlement does not establish a specific sentence that prosecutors will recommend. Each charge that Hoehn pleaded guilty to serving a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, said the US attorney’s office.
