Photo from Wikimedia Commons. The 27-year-old man arrested on Nov. 1 over a plot to bomb synagogue allegedly urinated on a Thousand Oaks synagogue in 2018.
According to CBS Los Angeles and Buzzfeed, detectives found a video of Richard Holzer on his social media allegedly committing the act in January2018 at the Chabad of Thousand Oaks. The chabad later moved locations.
Chabad of Thousand Oaks Rabbi Chaim Bryski told CBS Los Angeles that they would have known about the urinating if not for law enforcement. “It was very very ironic and creepy,” Bryski said. Ventura County Sheriff Detective Jeff Miller told Buzzfeed that Holzer wasn’t arrested because he was a “transient. We had a search warrant report number, but there was never a police report.”
Bryski also told CBS Los Angeles that Holzer’s arrest “really hit home” and he was happy that he was “caught before anything could happen.”
Court documents state that Holzer confessed on Nov. 1 to planning to blow up Temple Emanuel in Pueblo, Colo. after he was arrested in an FBI sting operation. He had been posting white supremacist propaganda on his Facebook page, per the documents.
“White supremacists continue to pose a serious threat to Jews and other communities in the United States and in our own backyard as this arrest indicates,” Anti-Defamation League Mountain States Regional Director Scott Levin said in a statement. “We commend law enforcement for acting quickly to prevent this individual from engaging in life-threatening violence. No one should have to live in fear of white supremacy, simply because of who they are or where they pray.”
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