Warrant issued after cross burned on lawn

A black man awoke Sunday morning to find a cross had been burned on the lawn in front of his Spirit Lake, Idaho, apartment, according to the city’s police chief, Tony Lamanna.

An arrest warrant was issued for one suspect, but prosecutors withheld his name Thursday because the warrant had yet to be served.

Kootenai County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Lansing Haynes said the suspect is wanted on charges of malicious harassment and conspiracy to commit malicious harassment – crimes punishable by up to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines.

Haynes said there was at least one other possible suspect in the crime.

Lamanna said the suspects were at a party at an apartment on Maine Street but weren’t residents.

Sometime between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m., they allegedly used Tiki torches to make a cross on the grass and lit it on fire, Lamanna said.

He said he wasn’t sure if the attack was racially motivated.

“I think young people were at a party and got carried away,” Lamanna said. “I’m not trying to make light of it. It’s obviously a crime, and we’re not going to put up with it in Spirit Lake.”

Lamanna said the man, who lived in the apartment with his girlfriend, discovered the burned cross around 8:15 a.m. and called police.

At least one Spirit Lake resident said at first she was outraged by the crime. Beth Miller said she later learned that the people involved had been drinking all day long.

“I know the kids, and they weren’t racially motivated to do that, but they still made a big, distasteful mistake,” Miller said.

Mayor Roxy Martin said the cross burning was being handled appropriately by police.

“We’re not taking it lightly by any stretch of the imagination,” Martin said.