A Muslim student at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin has been arrested after police determined that the slurs painted on his dorm room door and the adjoining wall were painted there by him and not by a racist.
The student, 20-year-old Michael Kee reported the hate crime to the college and then to the police. telling them that he felt threatened over his religion. But police soon had evidence they Kee himself, had posted the offending slurs.
Police initially treated the incident as a hate crime, but after an investigation they determined that the student had perpetrated a fraud and painted the graffiti himself, according to WQRF.
Officials now say the student was affected by the outpouring of support a Jewish student recently received when he was a victim of a threatening note pushed under his door. Police said Kee “observed how the Beloit College community had come together after the first reported incident and wanted similar attention.”
The police added that Kee’s fraudulent hate crime would only served to “de-legitimize” victims of real hate crimes.
