A white suspect accused of the fatal stabbing of a black man on a Manhattan street has been indicted on a charge of murder as an act of terrorism.

James Harris Jackson, 28, appeared briefly in court on Monday and did not speak. Prosecutors had previously also charged him with murder as a hate crime. Jackson’s attorney had no comment.

Jackson is accused of killing Timothy Caughman, 66, a stranger to him. Caughman was attacked from behind last week as he was collecting bottles for recycling.



An arraignment on the indictment has been set for 13 April.



Speaking with a reporter for the Daily News at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex, Jackson said he had intended it as “a practice run” in a mission to deter interracial relationships.



He said he envisioned a white woman thinking: “Well, if that guy feels so strongly about it, maybe I shouldn’t do it.”



Caughman, who was remembered as a gentleman and a good neighbor, was alone when he was attacked from behind with a sword. He staggered, bleeding, into a police station and later died at a hospital.

“Tim Caughman did not deserve to die like that,” said Portia Clark, a childhood friend who grew up in Queens and attended the hearing with Caughman’s other friends on Monday. “Nobody does. I mean, come on, we’re black, white, yellow, brown – that’s ridiculous. We’re trying to get along.”

Carl Nimmons wept outside court after seeing Jackson. “It really hurt me to see that man, because I can’t do nothing about it. I don’t have the power to do anything about it,” he said.

In the Rikers interview, Jackson said in retrospect that he would rather have killed “a young thug” or “a successful older black man with blondes ... people you see in Midtown. These younger guys that put white girls on the wrong path”.

He complained that on television, “it’s like every other commercial in the past few years has a mixed-race couple in it”.

“The white race is being eroded ... No one cares about you. The Chinese don’t care about you, the blacks don’t care about you,” he said.

Jackson, who was raised in what was described as a churchgoing, liberal family in a Baltimore suburb, said his ideal society was “1950s America”.

Jackson was in the army from 2009 to 2012 and worked as an intelligence analyst, the army said. Deployed in Afghanistan in 2010 until 2011, he earned several medals and attained the rank of specialist.

The military training, Jackson said, helped him plan the bloodshed.

“I had been thinking about it for a long time, for the past couple of years,” he said. “I figured I would end up getting shot by police, kill myself, or end up in jail.”

His attorney, Sam Talkin, has said if the allegations are anywhere close to being true, “then we’re going to address the obvious psychological issues that are present in this case”.