NJ man pleads guilty to threatening Orthodox Jews for pandemic
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — A New Jersey man has pleaded guilty to threatening the Jewish community of Lakewood over violations of the state’s lockdown rules that took place there in March.
Anthony Lodespoto, 43, pleaded guilty to charges of “bias intimidation” on Friday, New Jersey Advance Media reported Monday. Prosecutors are seeking a six-month jail term for Lodespoto, who has been jailed since his arrest.
He used Facebook’s direct messaging feature to threaten the Jewish community of Lakewood, a township with a large Orthodox population that at the time had reported a higher number of coronavirus cases than surrounding areas. In his messages, which he sent to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy among others, Lodespoto said he would attack Jews there with a baseball bat.
Lodespoto reportedly was angry about parties in Lakewood, including multiple Jewish weddings, that did not comply with the state’s social distancing rules. Criticism of Lakewood’s Jews was rampant on social media at the time, prompting Murphy to condemn hate speech inspired by the pandemic.
“Scapegoating, bullying, or vilification of any community is completely unacceptable – today or ever,” Murphy wrote on Twitter in late March. “There is a special place in hell for the small minority that do this during this crisis.”
The post NJ man pleads guilty to threatening Orthodox Jews during pandemic’s early days appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
