BURLINGTON — A South Burlington teenager is expected to reach a plea agreement in a hate crime case involving racist graffiti discovered over the summer at South Burlington High School, prosecutors say.
Tyler Austin, 19, was charged with felony unlawful mischief in August for allegedly spray painting graffiti on the school’s athletic field that attacked fellow student Isaiah Hines, using a derogatory racial term for black people, according to court documents.
Both Austin and Hines graduated from South Burlington High School last spring. Hines, who is black, was a student leader who led the push for the South Burlington School District to drop the Rebels nickname for its sports teams.
The Chittenden County state’s attorney added a hate crime enhancement to the unlawful mischief charge, and as a result, Austin faced up to seven years in prison and up to a $7,000 fine. Austin pleaded not guilty at his October arraignment.
Assistant State’s Attorney Ryan Richards said Monday that he believes Austin will change his plea at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday in exchange for a much lighter sentence.
Richards said the details of the plea agreement are still being hammered out, but he expects it will not include prison time or probation. Instead, Austin is likely to spend time on a work crew and pay a fine, Richards said.
Austin has already agreed to make a written apology and has been performing community service with the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, a nonprofit that supports new immigrants, according to Richards.
Austin’s attorney, Lisa Shelkrot, said she would not comment before the hearing Wednesday. The Association of Africans Living in Vermont did not respond to calls seeking confirmation of Austin’s volunteer work.
South Burlington police investigating the racist graffiti, which was discovered in June, filed an affidavit that included text messages from Austin’s number where he appeared to admit responsibility for the graffiti, as well as a sworn statement from a friend who described watching him spray paint the athletic field, court records show.
Another fellow student at South Burlington High School told police it was “common knowledge” that Austin felt that the “Rebel name change” was “so stupid,” the records show.
South Burlington Detective Cpl. Andrew Johnson said in a sworn statement that “at the time of the graffiti, Isaiah Hines … had been the forerunner in getting the South Burlington High School’s mascot name changed from Rebel to some other more socially acceptable name.”
Johnson also wrote that the Rebels name change polarized the community, with some residents arguing that the name has “links to racist beliefs while others believed in the historical importance of the name.”
In February, the South Burlington School Board voted to drop the Rebels name, prompting a backlash that turned into a local political movement. A group called the Rebel Alliance promoted write-in candidates for school board, campaigned against school budgets and petitioned for a citywide vote on the name change.
The school board rejected the petition for a public vote in May, and members of the Rebel Alliance are suing the South Burlington School District to force such a vote. That case is awaiting a judge’s ruling on the district’s motion to have it dismissed.
Members of the Rebel Alliance have consistently argued that the Rebels name has no historical connection to the Confederacy or slavery in America and that their campaign is untethered to any racial animus.
Austin’s friend who claimed to have observed him spray painting the athletic field suggested in an interview with Detective Johnson that Austin was not motivated by racial animus when directing a racial slur at a black student, but was instead upset by the school changing its team name.
The friend said he could not think of any reason Austin would have “hatred toward people of color” and that he believed “the graffiti was directed toward the Rebel name change and was not an attempt to spread hatred.”
Sheldon Katz, a spokesperson for the Rebel Alliance, said Austin has no affiliation with his group. Katz said he had a son who graduated in Austin’s class, but he said the two did not know each other.
“That person has nothing to do with us,” Katz said.
Katz reiterated that he believes there is nothing racial about the Rebels name and no racial dimension to the campaign to resurrect it as the South Burlington team moniker.
“Obviously that word is racial in nature,” Katz said, referring to the slur used in the graffiti. “I reject that (Austin) was in any way motivated by a group of citizens who are seeking a vote on this issue and who thought it was probably unnecessary to change the name.”
Recent figures from the FBI suggest hate crimes may be on the rise in the state. Vermont authorities reported 25 incidents in 2016, more than triple the number in 2015. The 2016 total is the highest since 2005.
VTDigger is participating in the Documenting Hate project led by ProPublica. If you believe you may have experienced a hate crime in Vermont, help us track incidents by sharing your story with the Documenting Hate project.
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