July 22 (UPI) — A Kentucky man was arrested and charged Monday with a federal hate crime for pulling a loaded gun on a Palestinian American at a restaurant in March.
The Justice Department said in a statement that an indictment was unsealed Monday accusing Melvin Litteral III of threatening a Palestinian American man and practicing Muslim while they were “enjoying the goods, services and facilities of a local restaurant” on March 28.
Little about the crime was revealed by the Justice Department, but local reports published following the incident state it occurred at the Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen on Walden Drive in Lexington.
The victim in the court document is identified as O.S. Following the incident, Omar Shalash identified himself as the victim in a lengthy post on X, screen shots of which were published online by LEX 18.
In the post, Shalash states he and his wife were at the restaurant to break their fast when harassed by a man who was making racist and anti-Muslim remarks.
Shalash said he attempted to confront the man about his comment who then pushed him and produced a firearm.
“He pulled a gun out of his pocket and stuck it to my head and asked me, ‘Do you want to die, Arabia?’” Shalash said.
Officers with the Lexington Police Department took Litteral into custody that night at his home, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported in the days following his arrest.
According to police cited in the report, Litteral tried to slam his front door on the arresting officers and then used his body to prevent their entrance. He then resisted arrest by not willingly giving up his hands to be handcuffed.
The federal prosecutors have charged Litteral with a hate crime offense and a second firearms charge. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine for the hate crime offense and a mandatory minimum penalty of seven years in prison to run consecutively for the firearm offense.
The alleged crime occurred amid Israel’s war against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza and a spike in hate incidents directed at Palestinians and Muslims in the United States.
According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, it received 3,578 complaints during the last three months of last year, starting with October, which is when the Israel-Hamas war began.
“We welcome the hate crime charge in this case and thank federal law enforcement authorities for their swift and professional actions to apprehend a suspect,” CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said Monday in a statement.
“No American should be targeted by hatred or violence because of their religion, ethnicity or national origin. Our country has been consumed by a wildfire of anti-Palestinian racism and anti-Muslim bigotry spread by those who seek to justify the genocide in Gaza by dehumanizing Palestinians and Muslims. It must stop.”
CCTV captures deadly Louisville plane crash
The moment of a catastrophic UPS cargo plane crash was captured on a nearby security camera in Louisville, Kentucky.
The death toll for the UPS cargo plane crash, as of the evening on Nov. 6, has reached 13 people, one of whom was a pilot who lived in Northern Kentucky.
Richard Wartenberg had been living in Independence since 2005, public records indicated. According to UPS, he was the captain of Flight 2976, which was bound for Honolulu but crashed shortly past the runway of Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport on Nov. 4. This made it the deadliest plane crash in the history of UPS Airlines.
Wartenberg, 58, appeared to be a car enthusiast, A 2022 article from the Bent Pylon, a publication of the Porsche Club of America, noted that he was a member of the Ohio Valley Region chapter. At the time the article was published, Wartenberg had been a member of the club for 20 years, which had nearly 2,000 members.
The Courier-Journal reported that the death toll includes two other pilots. Lee Truitt served as first officer, or second-in-command of the flight. Dana Diamond was the flight’s international relief officer.
In addition to the 13 deaths, nine others remain missing and unaccounted for.
This story may be updated.
The ATC tower is seen while smoke rises from the crash site of UPS Flight 2796 near Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025, in Louisville, Ky.
Jon Cherry/APLOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The grim task of finding victims from the firestorm that followed the crash of a UPS cargo plane in Louisville, Kentucky, entered a third day Thursday as investigators gather information to determine why the aircraft caught fire and lost an engine on takeoff.
The inferno consumed the enormous plane and spread to nearby businesses, killing at least 12 people, including a child, and leaving little hope of finding survivors in the charred area of the crash at UPS Worldport, the company’s global aviation hub.
The plane with three people aboard had been cleared for takeoff Tuesday when a large fire developed in the left wing, said Todd Inman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation. But determining why it caught fire and the engine fell off could take investigators more than a year.
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The plane gained enough altitude to clear the fence at the end of the runway before crashing just outside Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, Inman said. The cockpit voice recorder and data recorder have since been recovered, and the engine was discovered on the airfield, he said.
The crash and explosion had a devastating ripple effect, striking and causing smaller blasts at Kentucky Petroleum Recycling and hitting an auto salvage yard. The child who was killed was with a parent at the salvage yard, according to Gov. Andy Beshear.
Some people who heard the boom, saw the smoke and smelled burning fuel were still stunned a day later.
Stooges Bar and Grill bartender Kyla Kenady said lights suddenly flickered as she took a beer to a customer on the patio.
“I saw a plane in the sky coming down over top of our volleyball courts in flames,” she said. “In that moment, I panicked. I turned around, ran through the bar screaming, telling everyone that a plane was crashing.”
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The governor predicted that that death toll would rise, saying authorities were looking for a “handful of other people” but “we do not expect to find anyone else alive.”
University of Louisville Hospital said two people were in critical condition in the burn unit. Eighteen people were treated and discharged at that hospital or other health care centers.
The airport is 7 miles (11 kilometers) from downtown Louisville, close to the Indiana state line, residential areas, a water park and museums. The airport resumed operations on Wednesday, with at least one runway open.
The status of the three UPS crew members aboard the McDonnell Douglas MD-11, made in 1991, was still unknown, according to Beshear. It was not clear if they were being counted among the dead.
UPS said it was “terribly saddened.”
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The Louisville package handling facility is the company’s largest. The hub employs more than 20,000 people in the region, handles 300 flights daily and sorts more than 400,000 packages an hour.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former federal crash investigator, said a number of things could have caused the fire as the UPS plane was rolling down the runway.
“It could have been the engine partially coming off and ripping out fuel lines. Or it could have been a fuel leak igniting and then burning the engine off,” Guzzetti said.
The crash bears a lot of similarities to one in 1979 when the left engine fell off an American Airlines jet as it was departing Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, killing 273 people, he said.
Guzzetti said that jet and the UPS plane were equipped with the same General Electric engines and both planes underwent heavy maintenance in the month before they crashed. The NTSB blamed the Chicago crash on improper maintenance. The 1979 crash involved a DC-10, but the MD-11 UPS plane is based on the DC-10.
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Flight records show the UPS plane was on the ground in San Antonio from Sept. 3 to Oct. 18, but it was unclear what maintenance was performed and if it had any impact on the crash.
Golden reported from Seattle. Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit; Rebecca Reynolds in Louisville, Kentucky; Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; Jonathan Mattise and Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee; and Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed.
Security camera video shows the moment a UPS cargo plane crashed on take-off in the US state of Kentucky, sparking a huge fireball. At least seven people were killed as the plane came down and hit a petroleum recycling plant.
Published On 5 Nov 2025
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