Three people have been arrested for hate crimes for covering a small New York State town with pamphlets of white supremacy, authorities said.
Racist and anti-Semitic literature was left in places like a mostly black synagogue and church in Hornell, south of New York, police chief TJ Murray said Monday in a statement on Facebook.
The May 14 shooting that killed 10 blacks about 70 miles away at a Buffalo supermarket has highlighted racist attitudes in the largely white Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border.
Authorities say the white gunman from that shooting drove to Buffalo from his home in the village of Conklin, Southern Tier.
In Hornell, the first steering wheel was found stuck at the door of the Rehoboth Delivery Ministries as people began arriving for Sunday morning services, church member Marseena Harmonson told the Evening Tribune of Hornell. The steering wheel promoted the “Ari National Army” and included a skull placed inside a swastika.
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Harmonson said church members were alarmed, especially given the recent Buffalo shooting.
“And when you have kids, young people, old people, they don’t know what to think,” he said. “A lot of them never experienced anything like that.”
Officers found similar material in the front of the Beth-El Temple Synagogue and in other places, such as driveway, gates and a park, Murray said.
Then on Monday, police saw two men handing out the literature, authorities said. After officers raided his home, the two men and a woman were arrested on 115 counts of aggravated harassment, a hate crime. It was unclear if they had lawyers who could comment on the charges.
The media identified them as Aubrye Gradonetti, 31, Dylan Henry, 30, and Ryan Mulhollen, 27.
Mayor John Buckley called the racist flyers an aberration for such a united community. “These are three wrong individuals who have hatred in their hearts,” Buckley told The New York Times. “That’s something Hornell doesn’t reflect.”
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