With a police officer approaching, Ian Baron appears to have tried to get out in front of the story early Sunday morning at a McDonald's in Montgomery County.
"Is it about the synagogue?" asked the 22-year-old with Nazi tattoos on his arm and chest, police said. He went on to explain why his fingerprints would be found on cans of spray paint outside a desecrated synagogue half a mile away, according to police accounts filed Wednesday.
Baron's explanation didn't wash, said police, who arrested him on three charges related to $15,000 to $20,000 in damage at the B'nai Shalom Synagogue in Olney a week ago. He was being held on $5,000 bond Wednesday. Baron grew up in Olney, 10 miles north of the Capital Beltway. In recent years, he has shown an affinity for drinking and violence, according to court records, and made no secret of his neo-Nazi views. Officers who worked the Olney area knew him as homeless. He was recently caught drinking at a bus stop and had been sleeping in a friend's vehicle and in a shack with "White's Only" painted on the front door, according to court records and police sources.
Court records show he has not yet retained an attorney in the case. A call to a defense attorney who has represented Baron in the past was not returned Wednesday. Sometime the night of July 25 or early July 26, the synagogue was spray-painted with anti-Semitic graffiti and swastikas on its exterior walls, retaining walls, light posts and in a parking lot. Also, loose change was scattered near the entrance. Among the markings were "Juden raus," which means "Jews out" and was used by Nazis, and "Work will set u free," a reference to a sign over the Auschwitz concentration camp. SOURCE: Baltimore Sun
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