Man held in cross-burning
Police arrested an 18-year-old Spokane man Thursday in connection with a July 15 cross-burning in front of the home of an African American man in Spirit Lake.
Nicholas J. Schmitt was getting ready to come to Kootenai County to turn himself in when Spokane authorities arrested him, said Schmitt’s lawyer, Doug Phelps.
Schmitt and Michael R. Simmons, 23, allegedly burned a cross fashioned from Tiki torches in front of the man’s apartment. The resident awoke on a Sunday morning to find the burned cross on the lawn of his apartment on Maine Street.
Arrest warrants with $100,000 bond each were issued last month for Schmitt and Simmons, but Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas said authorities have not been able to locate Simmons.
Douglas said both men likely will be charged with malicious harassment, which is a felony hate crime in Idaho and is punishable by up to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines.
Schmitt’s family retained Phelps and was trying to work a deal with prosecutors in exchange for Schmitt agreeing to turn himself in, Douglas said.
Phelps asked the prosecutor’s office if his client’s bail could be lowered if he turned himself in, Douglas said.
Phelps said Thursday he was putting Schmitt in his car to drive him to Idaho when Spokane County deputies arrested the man.
“He’s a young guy,” Phelps said. “He was out doing some pretty heavy drinking. I think it was kind of a drunken prank where people weren’t thinking clearly because alcohol may have consumed him.
“If he’d been in a more sober condition, it might not have gone the way it did.”
Police reports said the victim, who lives in the apartment with his girlfriend, “was worried and scared he may have to move out of the area because of the problem.”
He told police he had experienced racism in the past, but “nothing like a cross being burned in his front yard,” the police report said.