Hoax Alert: Violated in Virginia (2024)

According to Beth Bailey writing in the ‘Washington Examiner’ there has been yet another so-called ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ recently this time at the University of Virginia on 30th October 2024.

She relates how:

‘A University of Virginia student waited inside his Jewish housemate’s room with a firearm on Oct. 30. Robert Cabell Romer then threatened his housemate with the weapon when he returned to their off-campus home. As the Daily Progress reported, this was the culmination of multiple incidents of antisemitic hate the 20-year-old leveled against his target.

Weeks earlier, the targeted housemate planned a party that Romer and other housemates opposed. Romer began sharing antisemitic memes in a group chat involving the target, who “requested that [Romer] stop,” according to the criminal complaint he filed on Oct. 30. The target also alleged in his complaint that “multiple times,” Romer “attempted to fight [him].”

Late in the evening on Oct. 23, Romer texted the group chat that “at approximately 12:30, I am going to free Palestine. Anyone is welcome to join in the beating.” Romer then began to ask about his Jewish housemate’s location. In one text to his Jewish housemate, Romer surrounded his name with Stars of David.

On Nov. 1, the Charlottesville Police Department announced charges against Romer for assault and battery, entering into a property to cause damage, making “a threat to kill or do bodily injury,” and brandishing a firearm. Its alert did not explicitly mention the victim’s Jewish background.

The Charlottesville Police Department did not answer the Washington Examiner’s questions about the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes recorded in the city since Oct. 7, 2023. A spokesperson did state the investigation had turned up no additional information.’ (1)

Based on this pressure from the jewish community of Charlottesville and Virginia in general the Charlottesville Police Department has since added ‘hate crime’ charges to Romer’s charge sheet. (2) Although it turns out that both the jewish complainant and Romer seen to have actually been members of the same fraternity Pi Kappa Alpha and the incident(s) occurred at the former frat house on the University of Virginia’s Greek Row after the fraternity had been suspended from campus for – basically – tormenting pledges. (3)

Romer’s behaviour doesn’t actually seem to have been ‘anti-Semitic’ at all but rather he appears to have disliked the jewish complainant – there were almost certainly other jews living in the former fraternity house – and to have used the complainant’s jewishness as inspiration for taunts and stalker/obsessive type behaviour which clearly crossed the line into unhinged behaviour that makes one think that Romer was drunk while he was doing it and if Romer has a drinking problem – not uncommon in fraternities - it would make sense of his outlandish and silly behaviour.

However it would also mean that despite the claims of Bailey and the jewish community of Charlottesville as well as that of Virginia in general that this wasn’t an ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ at all but rather drunken stupidity common at universities across the United States and elsewhere.

References

(1) https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3241733/antisemitic-incident-uva-warning-campus-antisemitism/

(2) https://augustafreepress.com/news/uva-student-faces-weapons-hate-crime-charges-in-frat-house-incident/

(3) Ibid.