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GLOVERSVILLE – A Gloversville man has been arrested, accused of making threats against an adult as a hate crime and assaulting a child with a pellet gun in separate incidents, authorities said.
Joshua L. Litchfield, 33, of Gloversville, was charged with second-degree assault and aggravated harassment as a hate crime, both felonies, along with two misdemeanors, authorities said.
The incidents involved separate individuals and with no connection between incidents, police said.
In the first alleged incident, the aggravated harassment as a hate crime case, Litchfield is accused of sending multiple text messages to a man the morning of Jan. 25 that included photographs of firearms and threats to kill the individual, according to allegations filed in court.
The text messages also included “hatred specifically directed towards (the victim’s) racial ethnicity as well as displaying a tattoo on the defendant’s chest of an ‘SS’ which is commonly associated with Neo-Nazi Germany,” the police allegations read.
“The tattoo is then followed by a text message standing he is of the Aryan brotherhood and is a Neo-Nazi and will kill (the victim) and send his body in a body bag back to his country,” the allegations continued.
In the second incident, the pellet gun incident, Litchfield is accused of firing a pellet gun at a child Jan. 31 at about 5 p.m., striking the child in the chest, according to the allegations in that case. The child suffered a quarter-inch blood-filled welt as a result, according to the allegations.
Litchfield also faces one count of second-degree reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child counts, misdemeanors, in that case.
Litchfield was arraigned Jan. 31 and ordered held on a total of $15,000 bail.
Gazette reporter Tyler A. McNeil contributed to this article.
