A New York man who sent more than 20 letters threatening the LGBTQ community, including an attack at New York City's pride march, pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday, prosecutors said.
Robert Fehring, 74, of Bayport on Long Island, around 50 miles east of Manhattan, sent threatening letters since at least 2013, according to court documents.
One of the letters was sent last year to the director of a group that organizes New York City pride events, and it threatened the New York City Pride March. The letter threatened “firepower” that it said “will make the 2016 Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting look like a cakewalk.”
A gunman killed 49 people at Pulse, a gay nightclub, in Orlando, Fla., on June 12, 2016. The gunman was killed by police.
An attorney listed for Fehring did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday night.
He faces a maximum of five years in prison when he is sentenced, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said in a statement, but online court records did not appear to show a sentencing date Wednesday night.
“We will not tolerate hateful threats intended to invoke fear and division, and we will hold accountable those who make or act on such threats,” Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the district, said in a statement.
Other letters threatened to kill an official with a Long Island organization and bomb a Brooklyn barber shop affiliated with the LGBTQ community, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.
