Man Arrested in Swastika Branding
This is just disturbing. According to the AP, three men in their 20s were charged with kidnapping and aggravated battery after they kidnapped a 22-year-old mentally challenged man and branded a swastika into his arm with a heated coathanger.
The article says the men, Jesse Sanford, William Hatch and Paul Beebe — all in their 20s — found the man at a Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico on April 29 and drove him to an apartment, where the abuse occurred.
“An article in the Famington Daily Times says, “The words White Power were written on the back of the victim’s neck and two horns were drawn with red marker on the victim’s face above his eyebrows.” It goes on: “Officials are calling the incident a hate crime.”
Farmington Police Sgt. Robert Perez said in the article that the trio “appear to be associated in some fashion to the white supremacist movement.”
Although the swastika shape has been used by some Native Americans — the Navajo used the image to represent a healing ritual — we can’t help but wonder if they thought he was Jewish.
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.
