An Indianapolis-area man who burned a cross and erected a swastika to intimidate his black neighbor in June pleaded guilty to a hate crime and a gun charge on Friday, prosecutors said.
51-year-old shepherd Hoehn, who is white, was upset that a neighbor was removing a tree on June 18, the American law firm for the Southern District of Indiana said. The tree was on the neighbor’s property.
Hoehn then aimed and burned a cross in front of the neighbor’s house; used silver duct tape to make a swastika on his fence; blew the song “Dixie” on repeat; and displayed a sign of racist insults, according to a plea deal.
“Hoehn’s hateful and threatening behavior, motivated by racial intolerance, is a blatant crime that will not be tolerated by the Justice Department,” Pam Karlan, deputy assistant attorney general of the department’s civil rights division, said in a statement. .
A request for comment from Hoehn’s public defender was not immediately answered Friday night.
Hoehn has not yet been convicted, but he was taken into custody by federal marshals on Friday and will be detained, according to court records.
He pleaded guilty to criminal interference with housing rights and a gun charge for having guns while a regular user of marijuana, which is illegal in Indiana and federally.
“I wanted to make him miserable,” Hoehn told the FBI of his neighbor, according to an affidavit.
Hoehn repeatedly denied that he was racist, but told investigators, “He’s a black man. Perfect opportunity, okay. So yes. I wrote a lot of racist comments on a board and put them there,” the document said.
The FBI affidavit also says that Hoehn told the agency he was upset about Black Lives Matter protests across the country and attempts to remove statues – a clear reference to the attempt to take down Confederate statues.
Hoehn was walking around with a gun on his hip on June 18, and some construction workers said they were scared – one avoided turning his back on him, prosecutors said in an arrest motion. The neighbor was so scared that he told relatives to stay away and sleep with a firearm.
A plea deal does not contain a specific phrase that prosecutors will recommend. Any count that pleaded guilty to Hoehn to carry a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
