The US Department of Justice has filed federal hate crime charges against Montana man for firing his gun on March 22nd into the house of a neighbor he believed was a member of the LGBTQ community and saying that he wanted to “get rid of the lesbians [and] gays,” Fox 29 Philadelphia reports.
Spoiler alert: he’s a middle-aged, overweight white man with anger issues.
John Russell Howald, 44, of Basin, Montana is being charged under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which puts hate crimes under federal rule. He’s also being charged with a federal firearms charge. If convicted, he could face a life sentence on the hate crime charge and another 10 years for the firearms violations. Howald is already serving a 10-year sentence in Montana State Prison for state charges stemming from the same incident.
Howald had previously served a two year sentence for animal cruelty for shooting a dog that had wandered away from a campsite. Howald then used a chainsaw to behead the dog and drove to the dog’s owners’ campsite where he threw the severed head at the campers and said, “Here’s your dog.”
During the same camping trip, Howald reportedly threw a beer bottle at a young boy at the campground. When the boy’s father confronted Howland about the assault, Howald waited until the father was walking away and fired a shot at the father.