Slapnik (right) 1999 booking photo on
An Ohio man was charged with felony ethnic intimidation and assault Friday after threatening to cut a Black family, while hurling racial epithets at them, according to local police.
Timothy Stewart was visiting his grandfather at his Cleveland home on June 3 when 54-year-old neighbor Henry Slapnik emerged from behind the apartment with a knife, Cleveland.com reports.
Police arrived on scene to find 20-year-old Stewart flailing his arms in the driveway, loudly warning officers of the man’s intentions to cut him and his grandfather.
Police said the offender appeared to be intoxicated and called on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump when giving officers his statement.
Slapnik told responding officers, “I’ve been here 10 years, they only been here one,” police reports indicate.”The RNC will take care of them, Donald Trump will fix them because they are scared of Donald Trump.”
He faces five counts of misdemeanor aggravated menacing and one count of criminal damaging and is set to appear in court on June 24 for an arraignment.
This was not Slapnik’s first encounter with police. Cleveland.com reports the ex-convict spent multiple stints behind bars during the 1990s for drug trafficking and theft.
The rise of the controversial real estate mogul-turned-GOP presidential candidate has been blamed for a spike in hate crimes throughout the primary season.
Trump rallies have set the stage for multiple racially motivated attacks.
Supporters at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama last November were captured on video assaulting a Black Lives Matter protester.
“At least a half-dozen attendees shoved and tackled the protester, a Black man, to the ground as he refused to leave the event,” said CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond, who recorded the incident. “At least one man punched the protester and a woman kicked him while he was on the ground.”
University of Louisville student Shiya Nwanguma suffered racist and sexist slurs, while being shoved out of a March rally in Kentucky.
“I was called a n****r and a c*nt and got kicked out,” Nwanguma said, per New York Daily News. “They were pushing and shoving at me, cursing at me, yelling at me, called me every name in the book. They’re disgusting and dangerous.”
Matthew Heimbach, seen in video of the attack, is a member of the white nationalist Traditionalist Worker Party and founder of the White Student Union at Towson University.
That same month an African-American man was punched in the face by rally attendee John Franklin McGraw in Fayettville, North Carolina, as sheriff’s deputies escorted the victim out of the building.
McGraw was later charged with assault and disorderly conduct. Five deputies were disciplined for their behavior during the assault.
“The actions of the deputies and their failures to act in situations such as that which occurred during the Trump rally at the Crown Coliseum have never been and will never be tolerated under the policies of this office,” Cumberland County Sherriff Earl “Moose” Butler said in a statement.
