Texas man charged with hate crimes over threatening voicemails to Zohran Mamdani: ‘You deserve to be six feet under’
A Texas man faces hate crime charges in New York after allegedly threatening mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in a series of anti-Muslim messages wishing death and violence against him and his family.
Jeremy Fistel, 44, of Plano, Texas, was arrested September 11 and extradited to Queens this week.
Fistel was arraigned in Queens criminal court Thursday following a grand jury’s 22-count indictment that charges him with four counts of making a terroristic threat as a hate crime, four counts of making a terroristic threat, seven counts of aggravated harassment in the second degree as a hate crime, and seven counts of aggravated harassment in the second degree.
A series of increasingly alarming voicemails and written messages that were left for Mamdani and shared by law enforcement officials call for the candidate’s rape and murder.
Other messages label him a terrorist and tell him to go back to Uganda and that Muslims “don’t belong” in the United States. Another message wishes “terminal cancer” and “a painful death” on Mamdani and for an Israeli military bullet to “go through your skull.”
Another tells him that he “deserves” to be “six feet under” with the hope that “somebody does it quickly” and “shoots you in the f****** face.”
“Let me be very clear — we take threats of violence against any office holder extremely seriously — and there is no room for hate or bigotry in our political discourse,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said in a statement Thursday.
If convicted of the top charge, Fistel faces up to 15 years in prison. His next court appearance is November 19.
The messages were allegedly left with Mamdani’s office on June 11, June 18, July 8 and July 23.
The investigation was spearheaded by the New York City Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force with support from the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service.
A spokesperson for Mamdani’s campaign thanked Katz’s office for “treating this matter with the seriousness it deserves,” adding that “unfortunately, threats of this nature are all too common — and they reflect a broader climate of hate that has no place in our city.”
The charges arrive at an extraordinarily tense moment in American politics after a streak of high-profile acts of political violence and threats against elected officials and public figures.
Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead during a campus speaking event in Utah last week, and in June, Minnesota Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman was assassinated along with her husband inside her home.
Mamdani, a state assemblyman who represents the borough of Queens, remains the frontrunner in the race for New York City’s next mayor after defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary earlier this year.
