A man who pleaded guilty to federal charges connected to his racial threats against Black children and interfering with a woman’s housing rights has been sentenced for his crimes.
Austin Schoemann will spend six years and eight months in prison for two counts of interference with federally protected activities, two counts of interstate threats, and one count of interference with housing.
The 31-year-old confessed to prosecutors that he pulled out a gun at a QuikTrip gas station in Wichita, Kansas, in July 2022 and threatened two Black kids while calling them racial slurs. When a Black woman intervened to defend the children, Schoemann turned the weapon on her.
No one was hurt in this incident.
Schoemann also admitted that from January 2022 to August 2022, he told a white woman that he would hurt or kill any Black woman who visited her home.
The indictment reads that Schoemann stood outside the woman’s home and shouted threats and racial slurs during times when he thought she had Black visitors or planned to invite Black people into her home.
He also sent videos and messages to her family members in which he threatened to shoot and kill Black people.
The 31-year-old pleaded guilty to the charges in July.
“Racially-motivated threats of violence cannot be tolerated in our society,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said.
Adding, “For months, this defendant made threats to a woman and her family that he would shoot and kill any Black person who visited the woman’s home. After that campaign of terror, the defendant called two Black children racist slurs, and threatened the children and a Black woman with a gun when they happened to cross paths at a convenience store. This case should make clear that the Justice Department will not rest in bringing the perpetrators of racially-motivated hate crimes to justice.”
