Guyanese mosque firebomber faces life in prison for hate crimes

Jan 09, 2012 News

(NEW YORK, CMC) – Prosecutors here say that a Guyanese-born man who went on a New Year’s Day firebombing spree faces a maximum sentence of life in prison on charges that include committing arson as a hate crime.
Ray Lazier Lengend, 40, was arraigned at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, where he is undergoing psychiatric evaluation, via a video feed into Queens Criminal Court.
“This case is very troublesome,” said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. “Flames from the Molotov cocktails can spread very quickly.”
Prosecutors said Lengend tossed flaming bottles at four buildings in the Jamaica section of Queens, New York, including two houses of worship. A fifth bottle was tossed at his brother-in-law’s Long Island home.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said cops are looking into Lengend’s claim that he tossed gas-filled bottles at two private houses and a vehicle.
“We’ve gone to these locations and we’re trying to gather evidence,” Kelly said.
Lengend told cops he bought five of the glass bottles at a gas station near the Van Wyck Expressway in Queens and the store gave him three more for free.
He said he drove to another gas station and paid cash to fill up the bottles with gasoline. From there, he drove off to the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic center but got scared off when he saw cops, he claimed.
Lengend told cops he headed to a deli on Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Queens and waited more than an hour to make his move because the store was too crowded.
“Once they left, I got out of the car and walked into the deli and screamed and threw the lit bottle filled with gas into the store,” he told cops. “I then went back to the mosque and threw another bottle of gas at the temple.”
Queens prosecutors said they successfully sought an order to have Lengend locked up without bail.
“There was a potential for tremendous carnage based on the defendant’s actions, terror that reverberates throughout the city,” prosecutor Dave Jeffries said.
Lengend told cops he planned to “inflict as much damage as possible and take out as many Muslims and Arabs as possible” by tossing gas-filled Starbucks Frappucino bottles from the balcony of a Queens mosque.
In a statement to cops, Lengend claimed he “hated all the Muslims and Arabs because they were trying to take over his life. They have been doing it for 40 years.”
The unemployed truck driver is expected to remain at Bellevue Hospital for several days.
Lengend’s lawyer, Lisa Saltzman, noted that her client was not identified by eyewitnesses in the first of two police lineups.
Prosecutors, however, said he was positively identified in the second lineup, which he disrupted.

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Guyanese mosque firebomber faces life in prison for hate crimes

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