An Ohio man who allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at a local church that had sponsored an LGBTQ+ event has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for the heinous hate crime.
It all began last March when 20-year-old Aimenn Penny drove to the Community Church of Chesteraldn (CCC) in Chesterland, Ohio, a small municipality nearly 30 miles southeast of Clevland. He had made Molotov cocktails, a form of crude bomb that's generally designed to spark fires.
He threw them at the church, court documents reveal, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Public Affairs, attempting to light it on fire and burn it to the ground after it had agreed to host two drag events the following weekend.
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The sign outside the church was damaged in the hate crime attack as well (Department of Justice)His plan was allegedly to burn the church to the ground, preventing it from hosting the events he hated, and later admitted to using fire and explosives to, as the press release states, "obstruct CCC congregants in their enjoyment and expression of their religious beliefs."
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That guilty plea and admission occurred on Oct. 23, 2023, just half a year after he tried to burn down the church. And on Monday this week, the 20-year-old from Alliance, Ohio, a small suburb of Akron that's located about 100 miles south of Chesterland, was handed 18 years in prison and three on supervised release — or parole — in what has been dubbed a hate crime.
He pleaded guilty to one count of using fire to commit a federal felony, one count of malicious use of explosive materials and another count of possessing a destructive device, the release states.
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Penny admitted to wanting to burn down the church because of it hosting the drag events (Department of Justice)
Assistant Attorney General Mathew G. Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division said in the press release: "This sentence holds Mr. Penny accountable for carrying out violence against an Ohio church because he disagreed with the way congregants chose to express their beliefs. Such acts of extremist violence have no place in our communities and the Justice Department is committed to bringing to justice those who would use or threaten violence to prevent their fellow citizens from freely exercising their fundamental rights."
Others echoed the assistant attorney general's statements and detailed how hate crimes like the one committed by Penny spark fear in communities and cause citizens to live on the edge, constantly in fear of another attack.
Data from a recent study reported on by Axios collected over the course of 2023, when the crime occurred, stated that hate crimes in general have been on the rise, with 2023 being a record year for hate-fuelled violence in America's ten largest cities. But the statistics can also apply to smaller communities, such as Chesterland, where a church was nearly burned down, forcing its congregants to live in fear — simply because they opted to host two drag events.
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