A 24-year-old South Carolina man has pleaded guilty in federal court in Charlotte to a hate crime for defacing buildings at Shalom Park, the complex that serves as a centre of Jewish worship, education and community life in the city. Dalton Ray Mullis, of Indian Land, South Carolina, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark T. Odulio and pleaded guilty to intentionally defacing multiple buildings within the complex, U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson for the Western District of North Carolina announced.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
According to the plea documents and what Mullis admitted in court, he travelled to the Foundation of Shalom Park complex in Charlotte on the evening of January 19, 2026. The complex includes the Charlotte Jewish Day School, the Holocaust Memorial and other facilities run by organisations that operate Jewish religious, cultural and educational programs. Mullis admitted defacing several buildings on the property — including the day school, the Holocaust Memorial and an employee building — by fixing threatening, antisemitic flyers to them.
The flyers, prosecutors said, carried threatening messages and depicted a hangman's noose, a swastika and a Totenkopf, or 'death's head,' a symbol historically associated with the German Nazi party and the SS. Surveillance cameras on the property captured Mullis spraying one of the entrances to the Charlotte Jewish Day School with what appears to be an adhesive spray and placing an antisemitic flyer onto the door, the Justice Department said.
What prosecutors and investigators said
Acting Assistant Attorney General Jesus A. Osete of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said Jewish Americans have the fundamental right to practise their religion and operate faith-based community centres without intimidation, and that the guilty plea shows federal authorities remain vigilant against anti-religious and antisemitic vandalism and violence. U.S. Attorney Ferguson said posting Nazi and lynching symbols on the Jewish Community Center 'creates fear and hate and has no place in our community,' adding that everyone is entitled to practise their faith without fear, intimidation or harassment, and that those who violate federal laws protecting that right will face consequences.
FBI Charlotte Special Agent in Charge Reid Davis said the plea holds Mullis accountable for distributing threatening materials intended to create fear and intimidate members of the community because of their religious beliefs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Estella D. Patterson said the conduct was intended to spread fear and threaten a place dedicated to worship, education and remembrance, and credited the partnership between her department, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The case did not rest on the flyers alone. Court documents also show that between January and April 2026, Mullis posted antisemitic messages and imagery on multiple social media sites through accounts he owned and operated, prosecutors said. The Justice Department published one of those posts as part of its announcement of the plea.
Mullis was first charged earlier this year on a criminal complaint and appeared at that stage before U.S. Magistrate Judge David C. Keesler. Prosecutors said at the time that he faced a statutory maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted, with any sentence to be determined by the court under the advisory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors. The investigation was carried out by the FBI Charlotte's Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, with assistance from the FBI in Columbia, the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office in South Carolina, the Waxhaw Police Department and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Dallas Kaplan of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Charlotte and Trial Attorneys Taylor Payne and Thomas Cilla of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division are prosecuting the case. The Justice Department said the case is part of the nationwide National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 initiative, led by the interagency Joint Task Force Vanguard.
Shalom Park is not a single synagogue but a shared campus: a day school where children study, a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, and offices and halls used by several Jewish organisations. An attack on such a campus is felt well beyond one congregation, and the same federal protections at issue in this case cover every faith community's places of worship and schools in the United States — including the gurdwaras attended by many Punjabi families in North Carolina and across the country.
What happens next
Mullis remains in federal custody. No sentencing date has been set, the Justice Department said. At sentencing, the court will decide his prison term; the guilty plea resolves the charge against him, but the punishment phase of the case is still to come.