Threats Against Religious Leaders in the South
Federal authorities have charged a man from Alabama for making threatening phone calls and sending emails to various rabbis and imams across the South, including some disturbing messages urging them to die.
Jeremy Wayne Shoemaker, hailing from Needham, Alabama, faces charges of interstate wire threats. He had been previously arrested on local charges for resisting arrest and for illegally possessing a handgun.
According to FBI filings, Shoemaker made a series of threatening communications directed at religious leaders in Alabama and Louisiana, as well as an imam in Georgia, and a church in North Carolina. After searching his home, authorities discovered a weapon along with a suitcase stocked with ammunition and documents containing names, addresses, and phone numbers of various religious figures and other notable individuals.
Reports indicate that Shoemaker has a diagnosed mental illness. His grandmother informed agents that he has refused to take his prescribed medication, though the specific diagnosis has been redacted from public records.
Shoemaker reportedly initiated contact with a rabbi in Mountain Brook, Alabama, and further investigations revealed he had extended his threatening calls to multiple other figures.
An affidavit from an FBI agent detailed one message where Shoemaker told the rabbi, “I continue to pressure Muslims to kill you rabbis.”
In a chilling statement, he declared his intentions, saying, “I’m going to keep doing it because it’s counter-terrorism and I can’t say anything that will try to deflect it. And I say to you directly, just as I say to many rabbis, I say to you directly, I want you to die because you want us to die. You want the Western world to perish.”
Needham, where Shoemaker resides, is a small town located about ten miles from the Mississippi-Alabama border. He is currently being held at the Choctaw County Jail.
The Clark County Sheriff’s Office reported on Tuesday that multiple agencies arrested the man after receiving credible threats of violence directed at several synagogues in Alabama and nearby states.
