Allegedly, Grafton Thomas, 37, entered Rabbi Rottenburg’s Shul, located in the Forshay neighborhood in Monsey on Monday, and pulled out a machete. He wounded five innocent people celebrating Hanukkah.
Thomas was arrested on Saturday in Harlem after fleeing the scene of the crime. Police found extreme anti-Semitic writings and computer searches in his home.
According to his former father-in-law, Grafton Thomas identifies as a Muslim.
The Heavy reported:
Thomas’s former stepfather, Joe Kennedy, told Heavy in an interview that, through the time he knew him, until 2014, Grafton had grown increasingly aggressive and unstable, even attacking him with a fire extinguisher. He believes Thomas is mentally ill and also provided some biographical details, saying that Thomas had previously served in the military, was born in America to a family with roots in Guyana, once worked on a chicken farm, and identified as Muslim.
A lot of these madmen latch onto some radical form of religion. He’s not a terrorist or a legitimate Muslim, he’s insane.
He also has references to the Black Hebrew Israelites in his writings. He doesn’t know what he is.
The complaint filed against ‘Grafton Thomas’ states law enforcement recovered journal entries with references to the Black Hebrew Israelites, Hitler & Nazism. The search history on a phone recovered show queries for local Jewish temples. pic.twitter.com/nyL2qwiA3E
— NJ (@9Joe9) December 30, 2019
Thomas is not poor and lives in a nearly all-white neighborhood in a neat home that sold in 2006 for $345,000.
I’m in Greenwood Lake now down the street from the home of Thomas Grafton, 37, who was arrested today for five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary after a Saturday night stabbing incident in Monsey. pic.twitter.com/2t1P8wSLXK
— Rachel Ettlinger (@RachelEttlinger) December 29, 2019
He has several arrests on his record, including punching a police horse.
Science writer Erin Biba immediately blamed white supremacy and then took her tweet down when she realized she made a fool of herself.
Erin Biba deleted her tweet but that’s why we got screenshots. pic.twitter.com/SI26dnCkiW
— pムȥ (@_p4z_) December 29, 2019
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