Excerpt By: News & Observer. Written By: Ann Blythe.
A Fayetteville man has been ordered to serve eight months under house arrest for threatening members of a Raeford mosque last summer.
Russell Thomas Langford, 36, was sentenced Thursday in federal court, three months after pleading guilty to staking out the Masjid Al Madina Mosque on June 9, 2016, following one member home, then returning to the mosque and threatening to kill a different member and bury that person on the property.
As part of the plea agreement outlined by federal prosecutors on Nov. 7, Langford acknowledged multiple encounters with members of the Raeford mosque that day. Prosecutors said he used “derogatory anti-Muslim terms” in an attempt to “obstruct their religious exercise.”
Langford was arrested after Hoke County sheriff’s deputies responded to calls from the mosque and found “several firearms, ammunition and additional weapons” in Langford’s Chevrolet Tahoe parked outside the mosque.
Langford lived three miles from the mosque at the time of his arrest and was assigned to the G-33 Mobilization Section of the U.S. Army Reserve Command on Fort Bragg.
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