Hate Crimes
Man Charged in Alleged Threats to Human Rights Campaign After Nashville Shooting
A Maryland man has been charged by federal authorities with making threats of violence to the D.C.-based LGBTQ organization Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in a March 28th voice mail, a day after the killing of six persons at a school in Nashville. Nashville police initially said the shooter, Audrey Hale, was a 28-year-old woman, and later said Hale was transgender, according to Hale's social media profile where he used masculine pronouns. It has not yet been confirmed how Hale identified.
The HRC is an American LGBTQ advocacy group. It is the largest LGBTQ political lobbying organization in the U. S. It "envisions a world where every member of the LGBTQ+ family has the freedom to live their truth without fear, and with equality under the law. We empower our 3 million members and supporters to mobilize against attacks on the most marginalized people in our community."
Since the shooting, some conservative commentators and Republican politicians have cited reports about the shooter’s gender identity in voicing anti-trans sentiments. The voice mail left for the HRC, which federal authorities said was traced to 34-year-old Adam Michael Nettina, of West Friendship, Maryland, used anti-trans rhetoric. Most criminal justice experts report that transgender people are rarely the shooters in mass killings, which are overwhelmingly carried out by men. Multiple studies have shown that trans people are more likely to be victims of violence than others.
In the threatening message to the HRC, the caller said many things that federal authorities said they believed were referring to the Nashville shooting and the shooter’s gender identity, according to court documents. Some threats, laden with profanity, made reference to specific acts of violence. Federal authorities filed a criminal complaint against Nettina on March 31st, and he was arrested later that evening, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Maryland. A detention hearing was held on on April 7th. If convicted, Nettina could face up to five years in federal prison.
A HRC spokesperson's statement said that the organization got two threatening voice mails late in March, and that it is “grateful to law enforcement for acting so quickly to keep our community safe.”
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