Hate Incidents

Chris Bujaj and Ardijan Mehaj, both 17; and Florend Gjevukaj, 18, were charged with assault as a hate crime for three unprovoked assaults on five Jewish customers at the Palisades Mall on Black Friday. There were three separate assaults and anti-Jewish slurs were used.

At least four swastikas and two white thunderbolts, a symbol often used by white supremacists, were spray-painted on properties largely owned by minorities.

Two 21-year-old white women, Shelbie Brooke Richards and Sarah Adelia Graves, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a series of attacks on blacks that culminated when a black man, James Craig Anderson, was run over and killed in Jackson in 2011.

Anthony Merrell Tyler, 34; Billy Hammett, 30; and Perry Jackson, 29, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 3 years and 10 months to more than 7 years for their roles in yelling racial slurs and assaulting an interracial couple in 2011. Tyler, Hammett and Jackson all have tattoos that read “white pride” or “white power.”

A 26-year-old Navy sailor was charged with malicious harassment for allegedly beating a taxi driver, threatening to shoot him and calling him a terrorist.

Ahmed H. Aden, 34, was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in a hit-and-run crash that fatally injured 15-year-old Abdisamad Sheikh-Hussein at a Somali Center.

Ibrahim Koroma, 28, was charged with malicious harassment for allegedly shouting anti-lesbian slurs and physically threatening a female security guard at a gay bar in October.

Hugo John Scherzberg, 46, was charged with suspicion of arson with a hate crime enhancement for allegedly pouring gasoline on the front door of a church and setting it on fire.