21-year-old college student in Chicago confesses to cross-burning, speaks out about why he did it

A suspect been taken into custody by police for an alleged cross-burning in a city park last week after a 21-year-old college student came forward, admitted to having committed the crime and explained his motivation to a local TV news station. It wasn't clear on Tuesday whether the suspect in custody is the same individual who confessed to the crime on Tuesday. 

In a strange twist, Merlin Lu, a 21-year-old senior at University of Illinois Chicago, came forward to NBC5 in Chicago to take responsibility for the cross-burning, which prompted a local uproar and made headlines nationally last week. Video of the incident showed a cross on fire in Chicago's Grant Park. A red hat was also placed on top of the burning cross and torched, prompting many to speculate that white supremacists were behind the cross-burning. Police released a screen shot from surveillance footage showing a shirtless Asian man running away from the scene as the cross burned in the park.

Like the Jussie Smollett claims of 2019, last week's incident also turned out to be a hoax, at least in terms of it being an act of white supremacy. In actuality, the cross-burning was the act of an extreme leftist, according to the very man taking responsibility for the crime, who is bent on seeing Trump removed from the White House.

"I don't want to wait till his term ends," Lu said in a video message he sent to NBC5 in which he admitted to having burned the cross. "I don't wanna wait until he may or may not get impeached. I want him gone right now.” In that video, Lu insisted he had to ties to the Ku Klux Klan, the nearly defunct hate group that made cross-burnings a hallmark of its racist activities during the early 20th century.

NBC landed an interview with Lu that was released on Tuesday, and the 21-year-old elaborated on his motives. 

"Just it came up to my head one day," Wu said when a reporter asked him why he decided to burn a cross in Grant Park, an act that carries a history of racism. "I wanted to find something that I could do by myself, like no organization, no friends," he continued.

"I did know about this historical relevance beforehand, but I didn't know the severity, how racially motivated it may seem from what I did," he said. "Cause my protest has nothing to do with race, nothing to with gender.”

Lu also insists his video confession sent to the news channel wasn't a threat against Trump. He went so far as to say the red hat place on top of the burning cross was meant to protest the "Make America Great Again" movement as well as Christian nationalism. In the interview, Lu accused Trump of "scamming" Americans and complained about how money influences healthcare in the U.S., remarks reminiscent of rantings made by Luigi Mangione, the lone suspect in the 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. 

Lu said he was surprised no one had identified him from the images circulated by the Chicago Police Department and the FBI, and maintained that the cross burning was not meant as a hate crime. Watch the full interview below.