A New Jersey guy has been sentenced to 6 months in prison for breaking right into a Rutgers College Islamic middle at the Muslim vacation of Eid-al-Fitr and vandalizing it.
Jacob Beacher, of North Plainfield, may even need to serve a yr of supervised free up as soon as he will get out below the phrases of the sentence he won Tuesday. He pleaded to blame in October to the federal hate crime of harmful spiritual belongings.
Beacher to begin with was once charged in April 2024 with unmarried counts of intentional or tried obstruction of non secular follow and making false statements to federal government. The costs stemmed from a break-in on the Heart for Islamic Lifestyles at Rutgers College in New Brunswick.
Prosecutors have mentioned Beacher broken belongings on the web page, together with a number of spiritual artifacts and a large number of different pieces that contained holy language from the Quran, Islam’s sacred scripture. Government mentioned Beacher additionally stole a Palestinian flag and a charity field belonging to the middle.
Beacher isn’t affiliated with Rutgers, officers have mentioned.
The web page was once unoccupied when the break-in took place round 2:40 a.m., prosecutors mentioned. The full harm was once estimated at $40,000.
Whilst talking with the FBI two days after the break-in, Beacher mentioned he was once the individual observed close to the middle in surveillance video, however he denied breaking into the web page. The incident got here a couple of weeks after the state legal professional common’s place of job had reported a contemporary spike in bias incidents in New Jersey.
