The gruesome, racially motivated murder of a 66-year-old black man, Timothy Caughman, in New York City a week ago by white supremacist James Harris Jackson was terrifying. It was also an act of terror, a grand jury decided on Monday, as it voted to upgrade the charges against the 28-year-old Jackson. Jackson, an Army veteran who is white, was charged with murder as an act of terror in the first- and second-degree and second-degree murder as a hate crime for stabbing Caughman to death with a sword on a crowded street corner.

Jackson admitted killing Caughman to police and outlined his racist beliefs and intent when he got in his car and drove from his home in Baltimore to New York City. “[Jackson] acted on his plan, randomly selecting a beloved New Yorker solely on the basis of his skin color, and stabbing him repeatedly and publicly on a midtown street corner,” Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney for Manhattan, said Monday in a statement. “James Jackson prowled the streets of New York for three days in search of a black person to assassinate in order to launch a campaign of terrorism against our Manhattan community and the values we celebrate.” “Jackson regarded the killing as practice prior to going to Times Square to kill additional black men,” a complaint filed last week said.

“Mr. Caughman, an ebullient man who described himself on Twitter as a can and bottle recycler, was rummaging through the trash on 9th Avenue near the corner of 36th Street around 11:15 p.m. on March 20 when Mr. Jackson pounced on him from behind and plunged the 18-inch blade into his chest, according to the police,” according to the New York Times. “’What are you doing?’ a woman told the police she heard Mr. Caughman say, according to a police complaint filed in court.”