VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The United States Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced Thursday that 63-year-old John Malcolm Bareswill was sentenced to two years behind bars for threatening to burn down a church.
He was convicted of calling and threatening a Virginia Beach church on June 7 - a few days after that congregation held a prayer vigil for George Floyd, who was killed in police custody in Minnesota.
The release said Bareswill "made racially derogatory remarks, and threatened to set the church on fire." Those threats will result in two years of prison time, according to the Department of Justice.
G. Zachary Terwilliger, the U.S. Attorney for the district, said this decision would help uphold first amendment rights.
"Answering the exercise of constitutional freedoms with threats of violence — especially threats that tap into a long and shameful history of racially-motivated violence against houses of worship — requires swift and certain justice," Terwilliger wrote.
"Bareswill’s threat terrified the adult Sunday school teachers who heard it and affected the entire church community," he said. "While this sentence cannot undo that harm, it sends an important message: Our community will not tolerate attempts to silence free speech or interfere with the free exercise of religion.”