‘It’s not a safe home no more’: Black man speaks out after South Carolina neighbor sentenced to prison for shooting at him
TheGrio...
Jonathan Felkel, a white man from Columbia, South Carolina, will spend nearly a decade behind bars after pleading guilty to federal hate crime charges for shooting at his neighbor, Jarvis McKenzie, in July 2025.
After a South Carolina judge sentenced a white man to close to a decade in prison on federal hate crime charges, the man who was shot at told the judge that his house doesn’t feel like a haven for him and his family.
Jarvis McKenzie had never met Jonathan Felkel before July 17, 2025. The two live a mile apart in the Columbia, South Carolina, neighborhood of Spring Valley. However, on that summer morning, as McKenzie waited for a ride to work, Felkel reached into the passenger seat of his vehicle, grabbed a rifle, and fired it into the air.
“You better keep running, boy,” Felkel yelled at McKenzie as he ran away, according to prosecutors.
On Thursday, nearly one year to the day of the incident, U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis sentenced Felkel to nine years in prison, plus time served for the charge. She also recommended mental health treatment and regular drug tests. He’ll also have to serve three years of supervised release once he is released from prison, and he is not eligible for parole.
“We’ve been Black a long time now,” McKenzie’s attorney, Tyler Bailey, who is also Black, told reporters. “We know what that means, if somebody says, ‘You better run, boy,’ with a gun, in July heat, early morning.”
Felkel continued to spout racial epithets at officers as he was arrested, telling officers that he shot at McKenzie because he was Black and that he was attempting to scare McKenzie out of the neighborhood because Black people were committing crimes.
“It’s not a safe home no more,” McKenzie told Lewis, referencing his having to watch over his shoulder to check the mail or even go outside.
Felkel apologized for shooting at McKenzie, stating that he wishes he could have gone back to that day and never done what he had done.
“Today, we have delivered justice for Jonathan Andrew Felkel’s disturbing, racially motivated attack on the victim,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “Hate crimes not only harm individuals, but undermine the fabric of our communities. The Justice Department will continue to vigorously prosecute such cases to restore safety and confidence in our neighborhoods.”
“Racially motivated violence will not be tolerated in South Carolina,” U.S. Attorney Bryan Stirling for the District of South Carolina added.