Man who went to prison for JCC threat placed on nightly house arrest

James Reardon

A New Middletown man who served prison time for threatening the Jewish Community Center in Youngstown has been placed under nightly electronically monitored house arrest for a probation violation.

Late last week, U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Gaughan ordered that 25-year-old James Patrick Reardon be restricted to his home daily from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. for 90 days, using GPS monitoring technology as directed by his probation officer.

Although a summary of the order is included in online court records, details about the reason for the probation violation are not available since the judge’s actual order is sealed to public view.

In 2021 Reardon was sentenced to 41 months in prison after pleading guilty to charges of transmitting a threatening communication and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime.

For reasons not disclosed by the court, Reardon was released from prison on July 15, 2022, less than five months after beginning his sentence. However, Reardon remains on supervised release for five years.

When Reardon was sentenced on September 23, 2021, he had already been in custody for more than two years since his arrest in August 2019.

Reardon was arrested in the summer of 2019 after police said he posted a video on Instagram showing him firing multiple rounds. The caption under the post read "Police identified the Youngstown Jewish Family Community shooter as white nationalist Seamus O'Reardon”.

Several agencies searched Reardon's mother's home on Eastwood Drive and confiscated two AR-15s, a rifle with a bayonet, an anti-tank gun, and knives.

A 2017 YouTube video and interview from the Charlottesville white supremacist rally in Virginia, showed Reardon answering a question. In the video, Reardon claimed that he is a white nationalist and wants a homeland for white people.

Increased security was added to Jewish sites in the Youngstown area once they were made aware of the threats.

This isn’t Reardon’s first probation violation. In October 2022, Judge Gaughan modified Reardon’s conditions of release stating he must not associate, communicate, or otherwise interact with anyone who promotes or discusses white nationalism or supremacy.

“This includes persons or events (i.e., rallies or protests) that promote or discuss anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-LGBTQ, replacement theories or violence toward any group or government officials. If you inadvertently associate, communicate, or otherwise interact with extremist groups or individuals you must immediately report this to the probation officer,” Judge Gaughan wrote in her order.

Again, the court record did not provide any information detailing why the judge modified his conditions of release.