“This wasn’t about the color of anyone’s skin.”
Following the arrest of a white man who confessed to firing shots into the home of a Michigan Black family that had a Black Lives Matter sign in their window, the accused sat before a judge last week to ask for forgiveness on the grounds that the violence was not racially motivated.
After repeated vandalizations of the house for three nights over Sept. 7-9, including a swastika painted on a vehicle as well as a rock thrown through the window, a neighbor’s home surveillance video displayed a masked and hooded man holding what looked to be a handgun outside the home. A resident of the neighborhood, 24-year-old Michael Frederick Jr. was arrested on Tuesday, Sept. 29, and confessed, Warren Police Commissioner Bill Dwyer told reporters.
Frederick attended his arraignment by video on Oct. 1 in Warren District Court on charges that included ethnic intimidation. He was allowed to give a statement after hearing the amount of his bond.
Judge Michael Chupa listened as Frederick asked for compassion from Candace and Eddie Hall, without going into details about what he did or why he decided to attack their home in Warren, Michigan, a northern suburb of Detroit.
“My No. 1 priority out of this, I just want Mr. and Mrs. Hall … I want them to forgive me, judge,” said Frederick. “I’m extremely regretful of what I did. I can say it’s not like me, I acted way out of character. This wasn’t about the color of anyone’s skin.”
Chupa advised Frederick to not address the case and reprimanded him concerning the scope of the allegations.
“People should be able to reasonably disagree about politics without it resorting to violence,” Chupa said. “Using violence, whether motivated by race or politics or hatred or acrimony — I don’t care, that is not what America is about.”
Not guilty pleas were issued on behalf of Frederick for each count and his bond was set at $200,000. Frederick’s court conference was scheduled for Oct. 13, and a preliminary examination is arranged for Oct. 20.
The Halls reacted to the report of the arrest at a news conference on Wednesday. Candace Hall recalled the frightening reality of not feeling safe in her own home.
“Just knowing someone is out there targeting you…we were afraid,” Hall said. “We were afraid to be in our house. If I was in the house during the day I didn’t want to be by myself, and we wouldn’t sleep there at all because we didn’t know if he was going to come back.”
However, Hall said she has seen some good come from this terrifying experience, noting that the couple’s neighbors “surrounded us, with encouragement and love.”
“There were people doing things for us, just to make us feel better, because they knew that was just too far. This guy went too far.”
