Ontario skyline
Ontario skylineiStock

A St. Catharines, Ontario man accused of drawing a swastika and the phrase ‘Heil Hitler’ on the wall of a coffee shop has pleaded guilty to charges including mischief and assault with a weapon, the Niagara Falls Review reported.

Alan Halstead was charged with mischief in August 2021 after a security video caught him scrawling the Nazi graffiti on the brick wall of the local business.

On Wednesday, he pleaded guilty to mischief, assault with a weapon and other charges in a St. Catharines provincial court.

He also pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a violent incident in which he was accused of shoplifting $100 in goods from a supermarket and punched two loss-prevention officers. A beer can he threw at one of the officers hit him in the face.

Assistant Crown attorney Ashley Galea detailed that the officer was also hit in the back with “an unknown sharp metal object.”

Judge Fergus ODonnell adjourned sentencing until February. “There are issues of public safety in these offences,” he said.

“On the [mischief charge], there is the question of what exactly was underlying it. Was it immaturity or something else?” the judge asked.

Halstead’s lawyer Alison McArthur said that the defendant’s acts were caused by substance abuse.

“A lot of these incidents were methamphetamine related,” she said.

(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)