Man takes down KKK snowman

A Hayden man who had a snowman in his yard resembling a Ku Klux Klansman holding a noose apparently removed it Wednesday after neighbors called police.

Kootenai County sheriff’s Lt. Stu Miller said deputies told Markus Eliseuson that he could be charged with creating a public nuisance if six or more of his neighbors chose to press charges. Miller said only two neighbors wanted to do so.

Idaho law defines a public nuisance as “anything which is injurious to health or is indecent, or offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property, so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property by an entire community or neighborhood, or by any considerable number of persons.”

Miller said when Eliseuson heard he could be charged with a crime, he knocked down the snowman built in his yard at 9656 Hillview Drive.

Eliseuson, who lives near Hayden Meadows Elementary School, regularly flies white supremacist flags and told sheriff’s deputies he belongs to the Aryan movement, Miller said.