There has been update in the claimed ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ that occurred in the city of Punta Gorda late September 2025 article ‘Hoax Alert: A Fire in Florida (2025)’ according to the ‘Jewish Press of Tampa Bay’ where they claim to have a charged an ‘anti-Semite’ with the attempted arson of Chabad of Charlotte County in Punta Gorda which I addressed in my previous article. (1)
Grace Gilson writes how:
‘A Florida man has been arrested in connection with a fire in September in a classroom at a Chabad in Florida, days before Rosh Hashanah.
Blake Richard Hoover, 31, of Punta Gorda, was arrested by local police on September 22, 2025 and charged with arson and criminal mischief. Those charges were also enhanced with hate crime charges, according to the Punta Gorda Police Department.
According to the criminal complaint, Hoover was identified after his mother, Kelly, saw reports of the blaze at the Chabad of Charlotte County in Punta Gorda, Florida, and thought that her son may be responsible.
During the incident, traces of fuel were found both inside and outside of the charred window of the children’s classroom, and the letter “J” was spray painted in three areas outside of the building.
Kelly Hoover told police that the evening of the arson, her son had returned home with an empty spray paint can as well as an empty gas can that had gone missing earlier in the night. She also told police that Hoover “has a hatred toward homosexuals and Jewish people that’s become worse over the past years,” according to court documents.
The Anti-Defamation League of Florida, Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlotte Counties and Secure Community Network issued a joint statement on Facebook, writing that they were “deeply concerned about the fire and vandalism.”’ (2)
The problem with all of this is that the evidence against Blake Hoover appears to be weak at best; since we just have Kelly Hoover - his mother’s – claim that Blake Hoover came back with an ‘empty spray can and an empty gas can’ later that night after he ‘went missing’.
The police and prosecutor’s case is seemingly based around this and Blake Hoover’s alleged ‘hatred towards homosexuals and jews’ – quite understandable but not actual evidence of anything other than a vague ‘motive’ – rather than answering the much harder questions about why spray-paint ‘J’ for example.
I have listed the problems with the ‘anti-Semitic attacker’ claim in my previous article, but I reproduce them below:
‘Now there are four points of interest in this account:
A) Only the children’s classroom was targeted – which seems odd given that it would presumably be easier to target the main synagogue building not just a relatively minor part of the complex.
B) The fire rather oddly occurred just after the synagogue and classroom has been in use, which both indicative and rather convenient at the same time.
C) The fire was quickly detected and contained with no one being hurt with only damage to the children’s classroom and no other part of the building according to the ‘Jerusalem Post’ account.
D) Multiple instances of black spray-painted graffiti which consisted of the letter ‘J’ were discovered.
Now it should be fairly obvious that something is wrong in this narrative because everything is a little bit too convenient; the fire occurs in a relatively unimportant of the Chabad Centre, the fire occurs soon after the children’s classroom and synagogue has been in use, the fire is quickly contained with minimal damage and there are multiple instances of graffiti with the letter ‘J’ on the building.
If it were just the case that points A, B and C were true then I’d be inclined to put it down to being an accidental fire – maybe a member of the congregation snuck into the children’s classroom for a sneaky cigarette and didn’t dispose of the cigarette correctly and the fire was the result – and Jacobson is simply trying to shriek that it was an ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ for his own personal profit because it ‘might be’.
However, but because of point D – the multiple instances of the graffiti consisting of the letter ‘J’ – it just seems wrong because no ‘anti-Semite’ uses the letter ‘J’ by itself as a way to label jews – the star of David, ‘Jew’ or something like that sure but ‘J’ seems wrong and seems to be an incautious and rather obscure ‘Holocaust’ reference to the ‘J’ stamp used to identify jews in their passports by the Third Reich – which to my mind is simply too much to credit to ‘anti-Semitic vandals’.
It is one of those ‘he doth protest too much’ moments and it makes little sense as a mightily convenient ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ that causes minimal damage to an relatively unimportant part of the Chabad Centre and then there is really odd - vaguely ‘anti-Semitic’ but in a really obscure way (kind of like someone has been reading one too many ‘Holocaust’ books) – graffiti around the building in multiple instances, but yet we don’t have footage of either the people responsible for the fire or the graffiti.
While all of this occurs days before Rosh Hashanah – what should be one of the busiest services of the year in a Chabad Centre and/or a synagogue – which naturally is going to pull in all sorts of additional visitors and makes one rather suspect that given all these oddities and convenient coincidences – as well as that there is apparently no evidence that the alleged vandals were ever actually present – that the culprit here is not ‘anti-Semitic vandals’ at all but rather Rabbi Jacobson and/or a member of his congregation looking to get more congregants for Rosh Hashanah and/or looking for donations/an insurance payment.’ (3)
We can see from the above that the ‘evidence’ against Blake Hoover doesn’t answer any of these problems whatsoever and seems to be a more a case of convenience – ‘anti-Semite’ turned in by his mum and charged by police – than a piece of actual investigation.
I might be wrong however and Blake Hoover might have done it and just gotten extraordinarily unlucky but obviously I don’t think so.
References
(1) This is available here: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/hoax-alert-a-fire-in-florida-2025
(2) https://www.jewishpresstampa.com/articles/florida-man-charged-with-arson-for-setting-chabad-classroom-ablaze-before-rosh-hashanah/
(3) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/hoax-alert-a-fire-in-florida-2025