Gay Bar Shooter Involved In Hate Crime Was A Nazi

The teen-ager who shot up a gay bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts last Thursday after first wielding an axe at several patrons and leaving several patrons seriously injured was a self-described Nazi according to PageoneQ. The teen-ager died in a shoot-out this weekend with Arkansas police, which also left one dead police officer and a female acquaintance he had picked up along the way in his cross-country trek. Jacob Robida, age 18, shot the woman in the head before opening fire on police.

Robida, age 18, maintained a personal website on myspace.com where he went under the name Jake Jekyll. PageoneQ reports:

There are, on the site, many text and graphic references to murder, Nazis, anarchy and antisocial behavior. One such entry refers to Seig Heil, a popular Third Reich chant and greeting which translates as "Hail to Victory."

Prominently headlined on the site is a section of prose titled, Pass the Axe: PASS THE AXE "Pass me something Sharp and Wicked and I'll pass it back don't worry I'll pass it back." Hey click on the axe and grab it. Get your hands bloody baby! Add it to your page or put it in a comment box. Doesn't matter where you put it just PASS THE FUCKIN AXE!

Family and friends claimed that Robida had not previously expressed any anti-homosexual views. But Robida did have a swastika tatoo on his arm according to his friends. And PageoneQ discovered that a member of Robida's family in New Bedford had signed an anti-gay marriage petition according to records maintained by the Secretary of the Commonwealth.

Robida resided in a district represented by the openly gay Rep. Barney Frank (D). According to news reports, Frank hopes that this tragic hate crime will help convince Congress to add "sexual orientation" to the federal hate crimes law. The bill passed the House last year and is currently pending in the Senate.

Indiana is just one of 4 states in the country without any hate crimes law. Marion Co. Prosecutor Carl Brizzi had pledged last year to push for legislation during this year's legislative session, which included sexual orientation, but those efforts never materialized.