On Monday, 21-year-old Quintez Brown allegedly walked into the campaign office of Craig Greenberg, a mayoral candidate in Louisville, Kentucky, and opened fire, targeting Greenberg. None of the five people in the room at the time were hit but Greenberg’s sweater was grazed. The people in the room succeeded in barricading the door and the suspect fled. Brown was arrested while in possession of a loaded 9mm magazine along with a handgun, a handgun case, and additional magazines less than half a mile from the scene of the shooting.
Brown had been an organizer with Black Lives Matter Louisville and an independent candidate for the city’s municipal council. The Louisville Community Bail Fund, an arm of the local Black Lives Matter chapter, paid the bail that secured his release, local outlets reported. Brown, a senior at the University of Louisville, was an activist who was at the forefront of Breonna Taylor protests and has written for the Courier-Journal.
Brown was arraigned on Tuesday and charged with attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment. His bond was set at $100,000 cash.
He was bonded out of jail on Wednesday by the Louisville Community Bail Fund, a Black Lives Matter bail fund group.
“Jail is a final destination for black folks in this state,” Chanelle Helm, a spokesperson for the fund, told the Louisville Courier-Journal. Mr Brown is a former columnist for that newspaper.
The police have yet to announce a motive for the shooting though questions concerning the mental state of Brown have been raised.
“Mr. Greenberg is Jewish, so there’s that, we don’t know if it’s tied to the candidates or is political or if we are dealing with someone with mental issues or is venomous,” Police Chief Erika Shields told reporters on Monday. “We are looking at this from all angles.”
Greenberg, a Democrat, is Jewish. In response to a suggestion that Brown’s attack had been motivated by antisemitism, the group replied, “We absolutely have no idea what the motive was. Everything at this point is speculation until legal presents more.”
Greenberg told the media that the release added to the trauma he suffered.
“Our criminal justice system is clearly broken. It is nearly impossible to believe that someone can attempt murder on Monday and walk out of jail on Wednesday,” Greenberg said in a statement today to local news outlets. “If someone is struggling with a mental illness and is in custody, they should be evaluated and treated in custody. We must work together to fix this system. Sadly, like others who suffer from a broken system, my team and family have been traumatized again by this news.”
Prominent Kentucky Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, co-director of Chabad of the Bluegrass in Lexington and the University of Kentucky’s Chabad-affiliated Jewish Student Center, called Brown an “antisemitic radical terrorist.” As evidence, he pointed to social media posts in which Brown shared Black Hebrew Israelite-related ideology, retweeted someone who identified NFL owners who are Jewish as “plantation masters” and wrote “Dollar democracy?” in reference to a local endorsement of Greenberg. Brown did not explicitly say anything about Jews in any of Litvin’s examples.
In the two weeks before Quintez Brown the antisemitic radical terrorist, tried to murder a Jewish mayoral candidate, his social media has pictures accusing Jews of being plantation owners, accusing Jewish money of running politics, and trafficking Black Hebrew Israelite garbage. pic.twitter.com/aQu14LHbY6
— Rabbi S Litvin (@BluegrassRabbi) February 17, 2022
Brown was featured by the Obama Foundation as a “rising face,” and participated in the former president’s “My Brother’s Keeper” program, becoming one of just 22 students nationwide invited to the inaugural gathering of the “My Brother’s Keeper Alliance.”
