DC firefighter charged with hate crime after road rage incident in Pennsylvania
DC Fire & EMS says Adam Kraus didn't report June incident
Watch report from reporter Mark Segraves
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A DC firefighter was charged with a June hate crime in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area. Thirty-two-year-old Adam Kraus, hired in DC in 2015, is accused by police of racial intimidation for yelling slurs and threats while waving a handgun. Reporter Mark Segraves from WRC-TV/NBC4 says Kraus didn’t report his arrest to the DC Fire & EMS Department, even though there was a story about the arrest in a Pennsylvania newspaper (below) over the summer. Kraus lives in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania.
Mark Segraves & Sophia Barnes, WRC-TV/NBC4:
Kraus allegedly was driving outside Harrisburg in Lower Allen Township June 30, according to court records.
Court records say Kraus was driving his pickup truck on Route 15 behind a car occupied by two African-American people. At some point, Kraus began flashing his high beams.
Then the cars stopped at an intersection, Kraus waived a handgun in the air and started yelling at the two occupants of the car. He also used a racial slur, according to court documents.
Kraus was off-duty at the time, but didn’t report it to the D.C. fire department as required. The incident was discovered during a routine background check.
Joshua Vaughn, The Sentinel (from July):
Kraus used a racial slur directed at black people and told the victims he was going to kill them and hang one of them from a tree while waiving a black handgun out of the window, police said.
The victims provided the license plate number of Kraus’ truck to police and later identified him in a photo lineup, the affidavit stated.
Police contacted Kraus, who at first denied being in the area at the time, but later told police he was in the area and that victims had brake-checked him, according to police. Police asked Kraus to come into the police station to talk with them, but he never appeared, police said.
