Florida Man Arrested For Texting Threat To Shoot Up Synagogue

Image by ljubaphoto/iStock
A Florida man who threatened to attack a synagogue was arrested by the FBI on Friday, the Miami Herald reported.
Hanson Larkin, 25, allegedly threatened to kill Jews several times via text messages. According to court documents, Larkin had been trying to convince an associate to meet him in Miami throughout the month of August and became increasingly threatening when that person refused.
Among the texts sent: “I bought a gun with my first paycheck If I don’t meet you I will be forced to use it”; “If meeting me for five seconds is not worth the lives of multiple Jews then I have no other option”; ”There’s a Chabad near me. And Amtrak has no security for weapons. Don’t make me make a choice they’ll regret.”
Larkin could face up to five years in prison if convicted of making threats via interstate communication.
Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
