A white man in New Jersey was arrested after blaming a Black man for the coronavirus outbreak. According to the New Jersey Herald, the incident happened on Sunday at a supermarket in Sussex County.

Robert A. Winter yelled racist slurs at the Black man in the checkout line and blamed him for the pandemic, the New Jersey Herald reported. Police said Winter was first having a conversation with the victim about the large number of people in the store. But the conversation turned ugly when Winter assaulted the man “while referring to him using a racial slur and blaming him, in part, for the COVID-19 pandemic” the New Jersey Herald reported.

Police said the 65-year-old was charged with terroristic threats, simple assault, two counts of bias intimidation and two counts of harassment.

The Vernon man was also arrested in 2018 because he had an outburst after losing power in his home, allegedly threatening to kidnap a utility worker and blow up a substation, NBC New York reported. Winter was charged with third-degree terroristic threats for that incident.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, "there were 216 incidents of hate, extremism and anti-Semitism in 112 towns in New Jersey" last year. One of those incidents was reported in Sussex County when a man was charged with possessing weapons and ammunition, along with white supremacist and racist propaganda materials. Police said 57-year-old Joseph Rubino of Lafayette Township was in possession of a box containing neo-Nazi symbols and a document entitled “N****r Owner’s Manual.”

In March, two bathrooms at a Sussex County high school were vandalized with swastika drawings and anti-Semitic messages, Patch reported. Another incident took place in Green Township in June when Jewish individuals received doctored images with Nazi imagery.

In December, an alt-right group known as New Jersey European Heritage Association allegedly distributed propaganda through a QR code, saying "No communism in America," "Defend our borders" and "Family & tradition our land our culture."

Robert A. Winter

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