NJ Man Pleads Guilty to 2022 Hate Crime Spree Targeting Orthodox Jews

A New Jersey man pleaded guilty Thursday to federal hate crime charges for a rampage in 2022 in which he used a stolen vehicle and another car to try to kill four Jewish men in and around Lakewood, N.J., home to one of the most populous communities of Orthodox Jews in the United States.

The man, Dion Marsh, 29, pleaded guilty to five federal hate crime charges and one charge of carjacking. Last week, Mr. Marsh pleaded guilty in Ocean County Superior Court in New Jersey to a single state charge of terrorism.

Mr. Marsh began his spree on the afternoon of April 8, 2022, when he attempted to carjack a vehicle driven by a man who was wearing traditional clothes that made him visibly identifiable as Jewish, according to a statement by the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey. That driver locked his doors and drove away, but not before Mr. Marsh managed to reach his hand inside an open window. The car traveled a block before Mr. Marsh let go, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Minutes later, Mr. Marsh pulled a Jewish man from another car and physically assaulted him before driving away in his car, according to a news release from the office of Philip R. Sellinger, the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.

For the next seven hours, prosecutors said, Mr. Marsh used the stolen car and another vehicle to terrorize Lakewood and the nearby community of Jackson Township, striking four men who were all wearing clothes that identified them as Orthodox Jews.

After ramming one man with the stolen car, Mr. Marsh got out and stabbed him in the chest with a knife, prosecutors said. Other victims had broken bones and internal injuries from the attacks. All the victims survived.