Firebug is also an anti-Semite: feds
A Queens pharmacist arrested for setting fire to a traffic enforcement camera in July is a twisted anti-Semite who yearned to pull off a mass shooting like New Zealand’s Christchurch massacre, federal prosecutors said Monday.
Elijah Song, 28, of Flushing, was busted for the July 18 camera fire — but it was what law enforcement found inside his car that set off more serious alarms.
Fire marshals discovered a spiral notebook filled with sickening anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and violent writings inside the Toyota Camry that Song abandoned in an FDNY parking lot after the traffic camera blaze.
“I would love to kill me a whole bunch of those f——-s, just like the New Zealand shooter who killed 50 of them,” Song allegedly wrote.
The note refers to the Christchurch massacre in which a white-supremacist, alt-right shooter targeted mosques in New Zealand and killed 51 people.
Following a string of more than a dozen city Department of Transportation traffic enforcement camera arsons between March and July, two NYPD officers set up a post July 18 at the intersection of Northern Blvd. and Douglaston Parkway in Queens, where another DOT camera is located.
The two officers saw Song set the camera ablaze, but lost sight of him after he fled to a nearby cemetery, according to federal prosecutors.
Meanwhile, about a block away, members of the Fire Department saw a Toyota Camry illegally parked in their lot, and directed police to the vehicle, according to prosecutors. An NYPD officer recognized the car as belonging to his neighbor, Song.
A vehicle search then turned up 8 gallons of gasoline, aerosol cans, a sledgehammer, a knife, receipts and packages bearing Song’s name and anti-Semitic flyers — as well as the spiral notebook with the hateful writings.
In another section from the notebook revealed by prosecutors in a court filing, Song wrote he’d “like to be the catalyst, to take back the country, from the ancient, evil, devil worshipers.” It’s unclear whom he was referring to.
“Mr. Song comes from a very strict and traditional Asian, Korean family,” said his lawyer Nicholas Ramcharitar at Song’s arraignment Monday.
Ramcharitar argued Song should be released to live with his mother in Flushing with a GPS ankle monitor, but federal prosecutors objected.
“The real crux to our argument is the dangerousness the defendant poses,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Wenzel. “He’s gone beyond just these disturbing threats, this disturbing manifesto, to real action, which is really concerning.”
Wenzel argued Song was allegedly trying to assemble an AR-15 rifle, according to a scrawled section in his notebook labeled “AR-15 build.”
“He’s taken real steps, real research and real steps to attempt to assemble a weapon, an AR-15,” Wenzel said.
Prosecutors also pointed to an open misdemeanor assault case from February in which Song allegedly punched an acquaintance in the face. Ramcharitar countered it was a case of self-defense.
Brooklyn Federal Magistrate Judge Steven Gold ordered Song detained without bail, citing the “danger indicated by the excerpts of this spiral notebook that refer to admiring someone who killed people.”