Alabama suspect charged with swastika and hate message crimes in Sylvan Park 2023

A suspected member of a white supremacist group was arrested on Sunday after five homes in Nashville’s Sylvan Park neighborhood were spray-painted with swastikas and hate messages last year.

A 19-year-old from Alabama, whose name was not released by police, is the suspect in the case. Surveillance video of the vandalism showed two masked individuals when the vandalism occurred in the early morning hours of March 19, 2023.

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The arrested suspect is “a suspected member of a white supremacist group,” Nashville police said in a press release.

The charges include five counts of vandalism, five counts of participating in a criminal conspiracy, five counts of trespassing, five counts of civil intimidation and one count of theft.

The suspect was 17 years old at the time of the alleged crimes, police said.

Video from one of the homes showed two masked men approaching the porch, police said. One of the men sprayed paint over the camera lens before hate messages were sprayed on the property and a Colombian flag was stolen, police said.

Investigators suspected that the 19-year-old was probably at a concert in the Madison area on Sunday evening.

The suspect was discovered and taken into custody without incident.

According to police, the vandalism occurred at homes on Westlawn Drive as well as Nebraska Avenue, Wyoming Avenue, Colorado Avenue and Idaho Avenue.

Reach Andy Humbles at [email protected] or 615-726-5939 and on X, formerly known as Twitter @AndyHumbles.

This article originally appeared in the Nashville Tennessean: Nashville to make arrests for swastikas and hate speech in Sylvan Park in 2023