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Guilty Plea to Federal Hate Crime in Hurricane, Utah Incident

File: U.S. Department of Justice

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that a Hurricane man has pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah to a federal hate crime.

70-year-old Robert Keller admitted he wrote a note to two Caucasian family members of an interracial family in Hurricane, threatening to kill them if they did not make their African American family member leave their home. Carlie Christensen is Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah. She says this case serves as a horrifying reminder that racial intolerance stills exists in some communities. 

“Hate crimes are bad for everybody, it’s bad for a community, it’s bad for the victims of the crime. And unfortunately it may take criminal prosecutions to address this kind of conduct and that’s where we found ourselves in this particular case,” says Christensen.

Sentencing is scheduled for December 1st. Keller faces a maximum penalty of one year in prison.

Bob Nelson is a graduate of the University of Utah with a BA in mass communications. He began his radio career at KUER in 1978 when it was still in Kingsbury Hall. That’s also where he met his wife, Maria Shilaos, in 1981. Bob left KUER for commercial radio where he worked for 25 years, and he is thrilled to be back at KUER. Bob and his family are part of an explorer group, fondly known as The Hordes and Masses, which has been seeking out ghost towns and little-known places in Utah for more than twenty years.
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