A man accused of traveling to Plantation to \u201cscout\u201d out a pro-Israel nonprofit with the intent to return with a gun is facing a federal hate crime charge nearly two years later, court records say.<\/p>\n
Forrest Kendall Pemberton, 27, of Gainesville, was initially charged by a federal indictment early last year with one count of stalking and one count of possession of a short-barreled rifle.<\/p>\n
Pemberton has now been charged by a superseding indictment in the same case, Amy Soto, Public Affairs Officer for the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Southern District of Florida, said in an email Thursday night.<\/p>\n
He faces charges of attempted hate crime, using and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence and possession of a short-barreled rifle.<\/p>\n
On Dec. 23, 2024, Pemberton\u2019s father called authorities to report his son had disappeared from their family home in Gainesville in the middle of the night, according to a criminal complaint filed in South Florida\u2019s federal court system.<\/p>\n
Pemberton\u2019s family found a letter they believed he wrote, which \u201cespoused anti-authority sentiments\u201d and in which he said \u201cgoodbye\u201d to his family. An AR-15 in a case, a pistol and another rifle were missing from Pemberton\u2019s room, along with his personal laptop, the complaint said.<\/p>\n
The family also looked at Pemberton\u2019s personal desktop computer and found searches \u201cfor various entities and their respective physical addresses,\u201d the complaint said, including a nonprofit with an address on South Pine Island Road in Plantation that described itself as an advocacy and lobbying organization for \u201cpro-Israel policies that strengthen and expand the U.S.-Israel relationship.\u201d Pemberton had visited the organization\u2019s website, the \u201cabout us\u201d section and the section about working there.<\/p>\n
Screenshots the family shared with authorities showed Pemberton searched Google Maps for a former address of the nonprofit and a direct route from his home address to that location in Plantation. The nonprofit at the time had moved to a different address in Plantation, according to investigators, but the former address can still be found online when searching for the organization.<\/p>\n
Investigators using internet IP addresses found that Pemberton had checked into a hotel in Plantation on Dec. 22 that was within two miles of the nonprofit\u2019s former address and checked out on Dec. 23. On Dec. 24, Pemberton was tracked to another hotel in Tallahassee, the complaint said.<\/p>\n
Law enforcement surveilled Pemberton on Dec. 25 as he got into a ride-share car, carrying what appeared to be a rifle case, according to the complaint. They pulled over the ride-share car, and Pemberton handed over three guns \u2014 an AR-15, the rifle and the pistol, as well as ammo for the AR-15 and pistol.<\/p>\n
In an interview before his arrest, Pemberton told law enforcement officers that he walked from Gainesville to Ocala, where he bought a a Ford F-150 for $400 before traveling to the nonprofit\u2019s former address in Plantation, according to the complaint. He told authorities he believed it was the current address.<\/p>\n
Pemberton in his interview said he went to the office unarmed to \u201cscout\u201d it, \u201cwith the intent to confirm access\u201d to the building and \u201creturn to the location with firearms concealed,\u201d the investigating FBI special agent wrote in the complaint.<\/p>\n
Authorities asked Pemberton if he would have carried out a mass casualty event and planned to kill himself afterward.<\/p>\n
\u201cUm, I really don\u2019t know if I was gonna end it with my life or not,\u201d he replied, according to the complaint. \u201cI hadn\u2019t gotten that far yet. It entirely depended if I ended up getting caught or not. If caught, that was a way out.\u201d<\/p>\n
He told authorities he had the guns for multiple purposes, according to the complaint, including potentially selling them, \u201cbut otherwise they can be used for criminal intent if I wanted to, which was my intention, such as harming another individual,\u201d Pemberton said, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n
Pemberton said he chose the Plantation nonprofit because of its \u201cpolitical influence\u201d and its location with his motive being frustrated with the \u201cstatus quo\u201d and \u201csee[ing] if I could make a change,\u201d according to the complaint. He allegedly said he considered targeting members of the organization but did not because \u201cit would have been a one-way ticket, in Plantation, I decided I wasn\u2019t ready. I gave up.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is held in the Paul Rein Detention Facility as of Friday.<\/p>\n
Pemberton faces a maximum life sentence on the attempted hate crime charge, a mandatory consecutive, maximum sentence of 30 years for the gun charge and up to five years for the possession count, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man accused of traveling to Plantation to \u201cscout\u201d out a pro-Israel nonprofit with the intent to return…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[506,5075,112,28,5076,249,251,250,114,115,5074,109],"class_list":["post-313398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-broward-county","tag-broward-jewish-news","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-florida","tag-florida-jewish-journal","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-plantation","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}