A 59-year-old Riverside woman was sentenced to almost three years in federal prison for making antisemitic threats against the former executive director of a Pittsburgh synagogue, the site of a mass shooting in 2018, and his family members.
Melanie Harris was sentenced to 32 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to transmitting a threatening communication in interstate commerce, the United States Department of Justice announced Friday, May 24.
Harris’ threats “terrorized a Jewish family,” said U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the Southern District of Florida.
For over four years, Harris harassed and threatened three victims by making more than 240 calls to the former executive director, leaving messages and engaging in conversations in which she unleashed antisemitic hate and direct threats against him, his family and Jews in general, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
In the calls and voicemails, Harris made incessant references to the congregants murdered in the October 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, prosecutors said.
According to the facts admitted at her change-of-plea hearing, Harris made multiple calls on Oct. 3, 2022 to the former executive director’s cell phone and left four separate, threatening voicemails. In one of the four voicemails, Harris said “I’ll cut your (expletive) head off” and used an anti-Jewish slur.
Harris concealed her phone number from being detected by a caller identification system, leaving the victims bereft of any knowledge of who and where the harasser was, putting them in continual fear for their lives until Harris’ arrest in March 2023, prosecutors said.
The calls originated from Riverside, where Harris lived at the time, and were received in South Florida.
On the same day that Harris began her calls to the former executive director, she also began calling the Tree of Life, leaving virtually identical hate-filled…
Read the full article here
