Federal grand jury indicts Ohio man for antisemitic assault on DC synagogue

The indicted suspect is Brent Wood, 35, who drove a U-Haul truck around the security barriers of Kesher Israel, parked on the sidewalk in front of the synagogue, sprayed a ‘noxious aerosol’ and yelled, ‘Gas the Jews!’ at congregants

Kesher Israel, located on the northwest corner of 28th and N Streets, N.W., in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., December 10, 2009. (AgnosticPreachersKid via Creative Commons)

By Jackie Hajdenberg September 9, 2024

(JTA) — A federal grand jury indicted an Ohio man last month for a December attack outside of a Washington, D.C. synagogue in which he reportedly yelled “Gas the Jews.”

He was indicted on three counts of “obstructing by force or threat of force a person’s enjoyment of their free exercise of religious beliefs, while using a dangerous weapon,” a statement from the Justice Department said.

The indicted suspect is Brent Wood, 35, who on Dec. 17 drove a U-Haul truck around the security barriers of Kesher Israel, parked on the sidewalk in front of the synagogue, sprayed a “noxious aerosol” and yelled, “Gas the Jews!” at congregants, according to the indictment. (The synagogue is also known as the Georgetown Synagogue.)

Wood was arrested that day, and and was also charged with simple assault in D.C. Superior Court. He has been considered a fugitive since he failed to appear for an arraignment in January. He faces a statutory maximum prison sentence of 20 years for each of the three federal counts.

The FBI’s Washington Field Office is investigating Wood’s case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney John Crabb Jr. is prosecuting.

“Number one, I’m thankful nobody was badly hurt,” Kesher Israel’s rabbi, Hyim Shafner, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “On the other side of that coin is it did bring attention to the rise in antisemitism.”

He also mentioned a later incident in which one of the synagogue’s members was attacked, and lamented that Jewish communities have had to bolster security owing to an increase in antisemitic incidents.

“Since then, a member of our congregation was beaten up, and that was just a few months ago,” he said. “If you had told me 20 years ago that in 20 years you wouldn’t be able to go into a synagogue without police I wouldn’t have believed it. We’ve gotten used to it over time. It’s just shocking that you have to have a police force to go into a synagogue. It violates the very essence of what it means to be an American.”

The December attack came around the same time as a spate of bomb threats aimed at synagogues, and days after shots were fired at a synagogue and preschool in Albany, New York. The indictment comes days after a man was arrested in Quebec for a plot to kill Jews in New York City on Oct. 7, the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO