A 21-year-old man has been charged with a hate crime, alongside a slew of other charges, in connection with the burning cross found in Grant Park last week, authorities announced late Wednesday.
Merlin Lu, of the city’s Near West Side neighborhood, is facing four felonies, including one count of damage to stolen property, one count of arson and separate counts of a hate crime, according to a news release from Chicago police. Lu has also been charged with several misdemeanors: disorderly conduct, reckless conduct, criminal damage to property and cross burning to intimidate, police said.
Burning cross found in Grant Park; South Side church offering $10K reward for information
The charges come more than a week after police officers responded to the downtown park around 2:30 p.m. on June 9 and found a wooden cross burning. A frame grab from a video taken by Keinika Carlton showed a wooden cross engulfed in flames near Columbus and Balbo drives in Chicago’s Grant Park on June 9.
Police initially announced they had taken a person into custody on Tuesday morning, after Lu identified himself as the person who burned the cross in an interview with WMAQ-TV.
“I did know about this historical relevance beforehand. But I didn’t know the severity, how racially motivated it may seem from what I did,” Lu told the TV station. “Cause my protest has nothing to do with race, nothing to do with gender.”
Police in their news release Wednesday said Lu was arrested Monday in the 1400 block of South Halsted, where Lu lives. Lu was identified as “the offender who … committed a hate crime by starting a fire that caused damage to city property,” police stated.
Asked earlier this week about the arrest, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to speculate on the motives of the person who burned the cross.
“We can only speak to the impact. And the impact was devastating,” he said.
Johnson called the cross “a painful reminder of how hatred toward Black Americans still permeates” and an “evil symbol of hatred.” He paraphrased author James Baldwin: “Power and ignorance is the most ferocious enemy of justice.”
“Whatever consequences that come out of this investigation, I hope it matches the level of not just discomfort, but pain that it caused,” he said
The sight of the cross burning sparked criticism and rage on social media from the Chicagoland community and beyond. Both Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker remarked on the act on social media, and the Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church in Auburn Gresham offered a $10,000 reward to help find the perpetrator.
The symbol of a burning cross is widely associated with racism and white supremacy, as it was one of the most prominent hate symbols used by the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1900s, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Lu is scheduled for a detention hearing on Thursday.
The Tribune’s Allison Kiehl and Jake Sheridan and Associated Press contributed.
