Cross burning at South Buffalo home brings hate crime charge
Mixed couple targeted in South Buffalo; suspect is in custody
Mario Echevarria and his girlfriend, Kelly Kohr, awoke from sleep early Monday morning and watched in horror from their front porch as a wooden cross burned on the front lawn of their South Buffalo home.
As flames engulfed the cross, planted just two feet from the house, the couple stood in disbelief.
“I was scared. Very scared,” said Kohr, a 32-year-old mother of two boys.
“I didn’t know who did it and why they did it. I thought they were trying to say they wanted to kill us. My boys are both Hispanic and I think it’s because we’re a mixed couple,” she said. Echevarria is Hispanic; Kohr is white.
“It’s scary stuff,” said Echevarria, 26, a native of Puerto Rico. “I thought, oh, oh, it’s the KKK.”
Donald R. Napierala, 40, was charged with committing a hate crime in the cross burning on the couple’s South Park Avenue lawn, which is about two blocks away from his home on Macamley Street.
Cross burning is largely considered a symbol of the Ku Klux Klan and extremist hate groups.
Authorities said Napierala was seeking revenge against Echevarria, who allegedly punched him in his right eye during a fist fight at an Independence Day party. But authorities also said Napierala is a white supremacist who hated Echevarria because he is Hispanic, and that Napierala displayed racial bigotry when igniting the cross.
“It’s a hate crime because it’s a racial issue,” said Lt. Sal Colangelo, head of the city’s Fire Marshal’s Office. “As for cross burning, it’s totally ridiculous. This is not the post-Civil War times.”
Napierala has been charged with misdemeanor arson, misdemeanor criminal mischief, and felony reckless endangerment.
By classifying the case as a hate crime, the charges move up one step on the penal scale, increasing the possible punishment. For example, a C felony becomes a B felony when it is classified as a hate crime.
Napierala was being held in Erie County Holding Center on $100,000 bail Monday evening and is scheduled to return to City Court on Friday.
On Monday morning, Echevarria and Kohr were sleeping inside their upper apartment. The woman’s two sons, ages 6 and 12, were also sleeping.
Neighbors said they saw Napierala at about 1:30 a. m. walking down South Park carrying a can of beer.
About five minutes later, the man returned to the street, but this time, he was carrying a seven- foot cross in one hand and a hammer in the other hand, neighbors told police.
The man walked onto the couple’s front lawn and tried to stick the cross into the grass, police said.
When that failed, he used his hammer to dig a hole about two feet from the house, stuck the cross into the ground, scooped dirt around the cross to keep it in place, and ignited the cross, police said.
The cross, which was draped in gasoline-soaked cloth, burst into flames. The man then reportedly watched the cross burning for about a minute before walking away.
Meanwhile, one neighbor called the Fire Department. Another called the family.
“My friend called me and was yelling that a cross was burning on my lawn,” Kohr recalled Monday afternoon, as she stood with her boyfriend.
The couple ran outside and watched as firefighters quickly extinguished the flames. The fire did not spread to the house. No one was injured.
Officer James T. Reese, along with Fire Marshals Edwin Ortiz and Harold Emerson, arrested Napierala at about 4 a. m.
Echevarria said he did not want to comment on the alleged fist fight, but he believes Napierala “came back the wrong way.”
Kohr agreed, saying, “He took this to a whole new level.”
“I still can’t believe that this happened,” she said. “What kind of person does this? Obviously, you got to be racist to do something like this.”
Records show that Napierala has a long arrest record.
In March 2006, Napierala was arrested for confronting a resident at gunpoint and then pointing his shotgun at a Buffalo police officer.
At the time, police said an intruder armed with a shotgun entered a home on Fenton Street, threatened the man inside the home and damaged furniture, and then fled. When Officer James T. Reese went to Napierala’s home to arrest him for that crime, Napierala pointed his gun at the officer, prompting him to point his service weapon at Napierala and order him to drop his gun, police said.
Reese confiscated the 12- gauge shotgun and charged Napierala with burglary, criminal use of a firearm, criminal possession of a weapon, criminal mischief and menacing.
Just six months earlier, in October 2005, Napierala was arrested for allegedly firing a shotgun near two women. No one was injured.
The dispositions of those cases were unavailable Monday, but records show Napierala has at least five court convictions for crimes including criminal possession of a weapon, harassment, criminal contempt, and disorderly conduct.
Mayor Byron W. Brown credited the neighbors who witnessed the cross burning and quickly called police.
“It really showed why we are called the City of Good Neighbors,” Brown said. “Even though it was terrible and scary, they took action.”
