New Lenox man formally charged with hate crime, disorderly conduct

A man faces hate crime and disorderly conduct charges over an incident where he allegedly threw up a Nazi salute and shouted “white power” at three Black children sitting in a car parked outside a New Lenox Walgreens, police said.

Justyn D. Giarraputo, 37, made his second court appearance regarding the incident on Tuesday after he bonded out of the Will County jail. He used cane to support himself and struggled to walk up to the podium in Judge Brian Barrett’s courtroom.

Giarraputo was assigned a Will County assistant public defender after he told Barrett he was unemployed and received SNAP benefits.

The attorney entered a plea of not guilty to charges of hate crime and disorderly conduct on Giarraputo’s behalf. The attorney also waived a formal reading of the charges and a Gerstein hearing, the latter of which would have revealed the probable cause for Giarraputo’s arrest.

On Tuesday, a criminal complaint filed against Giarraputo alleged he yelled out “white power” multiple times and “gestured the Nazi/Hitler salute” as a woman walked by the vehicle Giarraputo was in and as she “walked to the vehicle her African American foster children were in.”

Giarraputo declined to comment on the charges after Tuesday’s hearing.

New Lenox Police Chief Louis Alessandrini said the children’s mother left them in the car while she went inside the 466 Nelson Road store on Thursday evening.

While they were waiting, Giarraputo pulled alongside them in his vehicle, made a Nazi salute and shouted the racist remark, police said.

The mother of the children arrived in time to see Giarraputo and his vehicle, and she provided descriptions of both to police, Alessandini said. Police also obtained store surveillance video, he said.

Officers then tracked down Giarraputo, and “based on our conversation with him, we were able to present a case to the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office,” Alessandrini said.

“That sort of stuff is not going to be tolerated in New Lenox,” Alessandrini said, adding, “What he did went above and beyond free speech.”

Giarraputo had a court hearing last Saturday when he was first arrested over the incident. Judge Cory Lund set his bond at $50,000 after a Gerstein hearing was held and Lund found a “reasonable basis for the warrantless arrest,” court records show.

Giarraputo was ordered to have no contact with the woman, her children or the Nelson Road Walgreens.