Man charged with cutting down little LGBTQ+ library in Wake Forest. Was it a hate crime?
A man accused of tearing down a little library supporting the LGBTQ+ community has turned himself in to Wake Forest police.
Chris Batts and his husband, Christian Fessler, opened Heritage Floral Design in downtown Wake Forest eight months ago. A Girl Scout troop asked them to support an LGBTQ+ affirming little library and they jumped at the chance, Batts said.
The flower shop closed for Thanksgiving and, when it reopened, the little library had been cut down. Batts shared before and after photos on their business’s Instagram page, asking people to spread the word and report anything they knew.
On Tuesday, Alexander James Krumenacher, 26, of Stantonsburg, turned himself into the Wake Forest Police Department shortly after law enforcement used Flock Safety cameras and a local resident’s tip to identify him.
Krumenacher was charged with misdemeanor larceny and misdemeanor damage to property.
Was it a hate crime?
The business owners are calling the vandalism a hate crime.
“Just because no one was physically hurt (doesn’t mean) it’s not a hate crime,” Batts said. “It was something that was dedicated to a marginalized community.”
Before the little library was taken down, he said, the couple had received threatening messages online.
There were 11,634 hate-crime incidents reported to the FBI in 2022 across the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Nearly 60% involved race and ethnicity, 17% involved sexual orientation, and 4% involved gender identity.
In North Carolina there were 330 reported hate crimes in 2022, up from 290 in 2021 and 186 in 2020. There were 54 reported hate crimes involving sexual orientation.
“It is not being investigated as a hate crime,” Wake Forest town spokesman Bill Crabtree said of the little library’s removal. “We have no proof that was the purpose of the removal.”
About the little library
Little Free Library is an international nonprofit that encourages people to build small, free community libraries that often resemble large birdhouses or in newspaper boxes no longer in use.
The library box stood on wooden post painted white with colorful hand prints on the sides at the intersection of Elm Avenue and South White Street. It had “LGBTQ+” written in rainbow colors alongside a transgender pride flag.
The little library went up in late June, and in early August, a customer brought in her daughter’s old books to help fill it.
“She posted a really nice photo of her daughter putting a thumbs up in front of it, you know, and posted it on Facebook and social media and just kind of spread it everywhere,” Batts said. “And within an hour we were getting threatening messages.”
They reported the messages to the Wake Forest Police Department, which told them there was little they could do about the online messages. But after that there were no other problems with the library until their library was torn down, Batts said.
“It kind of went from zero to 100 very quickly,” he said. “It went from just online hate to it being cut down.”
Batts said he’s experienced bigotry and hatred before but he’s sorry for the Girl Scouts who may be experiencing it for the first time.
“This project was supposed to bring the community together and give the community something it hadn’t had before,” he said. “The premise of a little library is to give back, and someone was so bothered by what this little library represented and who it represented that they got in the car, at night, on a holiday, with an axe and cut it down and stole it.
Friends, customers, other Wake Forest businesses and other wedding service industries reached out to support Heritage, Batts said.
“No one from the town has offered to help or even extended their apologies,” he said. “They haven’t said anything. They haven’t shown their support, they haven’t expressed condolences. They haven’t offered to start the rebuilding process.”
The business has a GoFundMe online campaign to raise $3,000 to replace the library. As of Dec. 5, more than $3,500 had been raised from over 100 donations.
“We are planning on rebuilding it bigger and better,” Batts said. “And, honestly, gayer.”
This story was originally published December 2, 2023 at 8:00 AM.
