A Long Island man threatened to turn New York City’s massive Pride parade into a bloodbath that would make the Pulse nightclub shooting, which killed 49 people, “look like a cakewalk,” the feds said Monday.
Robert Fehring, 74, threatened to “assault, shoot and bomb” LGBT-affiliated individuals, businesses, organizations and events, including the parade, according to prosecutors in new documents.
Fehring allegedly sent more than 60 letters that threatened violence, “including through the use of firearms and explosives,” dating back to at least 2013, said the Justice Department in the Eastern District of New York.
One such missive to the organizers of New York City’s 2021 Pride March promised “radio-cont[r]olled devices placed at numerous strategic places” that would explode, making the 2016 nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., “look like a cakewalk,” according to the criminal complaint.
Another communication this year to the organizer of a Pride event in East Meadow, LI, told the man he was “being watched.
“No matter how long it takes, you will be taken out…. high-powered bullet…. bomb….knife…. whatever it takes,” the note said.
Other targets of Fehring’s threats included the CEO of an LGBT group based in Sag Harbor in Suffolk County, LI, and a queer barbershop in Brooklyn, according to prosecutors.
The letter to the barbershop — which prosecutors said had recently received television coverage — called the business “the perfect target for a bombing and/or graffiti and/or a shattered window front.
“Thanks to News 12, we now know who you are, and where you are,” the missive said.
Fehring of Bayport was arrested on Monday after a Nov. 18 raid of his home by the FBI and state authorities.
The search of the home turned up two loaded shotguns, two stun guns, “hundreds” of rounds of ammo and an envelope addressed to a pro-LGBT attorney — which was filled with the remains of a dead bird, the complaint said.
Fehring copped to sending the letters on the spot, telling cops he was upset over a “sickening overdose of that stuff being shoved down everybody’s face on the paper, on the TV and all over the place,” the document says.
“As alleged, the defendant’s hate-filled invective and threats of violence directed at members of the LGBTQ+ community have no place in our society and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said in a statement.
