Ben Gerrard had just sat down for Sunday lunch when he got a text from his friend Kurt that began to unravel a bizarre small-town crime spree.
‘My pride flag got stolen last night, did yours?’
Gerrard was out of town, so he checked his doorbell camera to see if the LGBTQ flag was still flying from the porch of his house in Chestertown, Maryland.
His was gone too. Mystified, he wound his Ring doorbell footage back until 12.41am and caught the heist in action.
The footage showed two teenagers run up the steps, unhook the flag, and sprint back to a waiting pickup truck, laughing and hollering as they fled.
Kurt’s neighbor caught the flag bandits in action and described the same scene – drunk teens noisily rolling up in a truck, grabbing the flag, and screeching off into the night.
The teens were ‘quite loud and disturbing’ and they heard the sounds of ‘crunching’ and ‘things being thrown’, according to police reports.
The witness even ‘heard the suspects egging each other on throughout the incident’.
Aerial view of Chester River with bridge to historic Chestertown, East Shore, Maryland
Ben Gerrard’s pride flag flying on his porch in Chestertown, Maryland, before it was stolen
Before long, Gerrard and Kurt discovered they were far from the only victims in the tiny town of just 5,500 on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Nine residents, including the local Episcopal church, reported their flags and other rainbow items stolen, and some had their yards vandalized.
Police didn’t take long to track the thieves down – they had security footage, the witness’ descriptions, and a ping from a license plate reader.
But when they identified them, the case took another unexpected turn. The seven offenders were teens from Amish villages 150 miles away in Pennsylvania.
Much of the religious sect communities don’t let members use any modern technology, let alone ride around on pickup trucks while drunk.
An exception is during the adolescent rite of passage called rumspringa, when some rebellious Amish youth leave their villages to experience to outside world.
Though almost 90 percent choose to return and commit themselves to the Amish way of life, many will enjoy a riotous time breaking the rules before they do.
But terrorizing a town in another state, raiding homes for rainbow flags, and burning them in a bonfire was too far even by rumspringa standards.
Mahlon Luke Fisher, 20, of Newburg, Jason Duane Smucker, 19, from Lykens, and John Caleb Stoltzfus, 18, of Gratz, were charged along with four minors aged 16 to 17.
Chestertown Police didn’t hold back, and decided to throw the book at them – charging the whole group with hate crimes on July 15 last year.
In all there were 40 charges for each of the adults, also including theft, malicious destruction of property, contributing to the condition of a child, burglary, and fourth-degree theft.
‘Guys are going to be guys,’ one of them told police with a shrug, explaining they ‘did not stand for what the flags meant’.
‘Boys will be boys,’ another of the juvenile suspects agreed.
Gerrard’s door camera footage showed two teenagers run up the steps, unhook the flag, and sprint back to a waiting pickup truck, laughing and hollering as they fled
Gerrard, a social worker with a Mississippi drawl who has been with his husband for almost 31 years, thought he was safe in his charming wooden home steps from the Chester River
Chestertown isn’t the kind of place you expect your home to be raided, much less in a coordinated strike over several hours late at night.
So few crimes are committed, mostly driving offences, that they can be jotted down in a column of the local newspapers.
Founded in 1700 and once a thriving shipping hub second only to Annapolis, it’s now a sleepy settlement where many families pass down their homes through generations and mistrust outsiders.
The downtown area is an oddity for rural America. It’s not uncommon to see rainbow flags flying from its 19th Century homes and businesses during pride month each June, as they were that night on June 16 last year.
So too were Kamala Harris lawn signs during the election campaign, in contrast to the town’s outskirts and surrounding area that are deeply conservative.
Kent County, of which Chestertown is the capital, voted only 50 percent to 47 percent in favor of Donald Trump.
But it favored Republicans in the House and Senate by comfortable margins, and overwhelmingly backed conservatives in the 2022 state elections.
Chestertown isn’t the kind of place you expect your home to be raided, much less in a coordinated strike over several hours late at night
Founded in 1700 and once a thriving shipping hub second only to Annapolis, it’s now a sleepy settlement where families pass down their homes through generations and mistrust outsiders
Gerrard, a social worker with a Mississippi drawl who has been with his husband for almost 31 years, thought he was safe in his charming wooden home steps from the Chester River. That being shattered still stings.
‘Probably the most disturbing part of it for me was when they took the flag, you heard them laughing as they ran back to their truck,’ he told DailyMail.com.
‘That was kind of a extra blow in a way, it’s like, look at these boys they’re and they’re laughing at what they did.’
With the Amish boys charged, the town had to figure out what to do with them.
Fining them was pointless, as they had little or no money and didn’t need it while living in their closed communities, but a slap on the wrist wouldn’t be enough.
The nine victims got together to discuss what outcome they wanted to advocate for with the court, and prepare impact statements.
They included both gay men and women, straight couples showing their support for the local LGBTQ community, and leaders of the vandalized church.
Reverend Claire Nevin-Field, rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, which puts up a rainbow flag and banner every June, was one of the key voices in the group.
‘I can keep ordering banners and flags as quickly as they are taken down,’ she declared after erecting a new set just hours after the thefts.
Emmanuel Episcopal Church put up this pride flag along with banners before they were stolen
A church employee erects a new set just hours after the thefts
For months they discussed how far to go. Some were angry and wanted to throw the book at the boys, while others refused to wreck their young lives.
‘The judge and state prosecutor were like, well, we can throw them in jail,’ Gerrard recalled.
‘But we didn’t really wanna ruin the boys, we just wanted them to learn a lesson… it’s not like they killed anybody.
‘Throwing them in jail for a week, they’re not gonna learn anything from that.’
Eventually, they came to a resolution – make the punishment fit the crime by having the Amish boys give back to the community they wronged.
The three adults fronted the Kent County Circuit Court on January 22 to learn their fate.
‘I was shocked at how young they were, it really almost brought tears to my eyes when they walked into the courtroom and we were sitting on the benches,’ Gerrard said.
‘I was like, these are just boys.’
State’s Attorney Bryan DiGregory told the court he was issuing a stet notice on the case, which indefinitely postpones a prosecution if the defendant abides by a set of conditions.
Fisher, Smucker, and Stoltzfus were required to complete 80 hours of community at a center that assists the LGBTQ+ community, near their homes in Pennsylvania.
The juveniles must do 30 hours of the same community service. None of the teens face conviction if they fulfil the conditions, and can apply for expungement.
Gerrard (right) and his husband outside their home where the flag was stolen from
After the verdict was handed down, the boys and two of their fathers met with several of the victims in a back room of the courthouse to apologize.
‘It was uncomfortable because we were across the table from these boys and they had just been sentenced,’ Gerrard recalled.
The teens, still wearing modern clothes, stayed mostly silent while their fathers in traditional, plain Amish outfits, begged for forgiveness.
‘They were very apologetic for their behavior of their sons,’ Gerrard said.
‘They said, “We’re not a community that does this”, and they talked about the shame that the boys had brought on the Amish community.’
Having left their villages at 4am to face judgement, the unruly rumspringa teens returned home – on a much tighter leash.
Thomas Maronick, whose firm represented the Amish teens, said the punishment was a good resolution that allowed them to avoid convictions.
‘These kids were just youngsters who made some bad decisions. They were just pranks, but they were hurtful to others,’ he said.
‘This was a tremendous learning experience for them, they’re gonna be much better people from it, and I’m happy with the result that will let them have clean records.
‘Bryan DiGregory worked very hard with victims to come up with this… It’s a situation where you had a number of victims and they had different opinions.’
Maronick said some of the teens traveled to South Carolina last year to help rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Helene.
‘It’s just it’s incredible to see that that level of support of people who are really in need and let’s just say what happened was out of character,’ he said.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .