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John Lapinski {BSO}

A shooting at the home of a Jewish Margate resident last year left two vehicles and the victim’s house riddled with bullets while children slept inside – an attack authorities later linked to gunman John Lapinski, according to law enforcement records.

Thirteen bullet holes or bullet-grazed areas were found at the crime scene following the August 21, 2024, attack. Several bullets penetrated a wall of the house. Others shattered a front glass window of the home and lodged in an interior wall, according to Margate Police documents obtained by Margate Talk through a public records request.

Other bullets struck the two vehicles parked outside the house, records state. The shooting happened as multiple children and their parents were inside the home, the gunfire awakening them from sleep. No one was injured in the attack.

The August 2024 shooting was first made public this week by the Department of Justice, which said in a recent announcement that Lapinski, 41, was linked to the Margate shooting “in which the home and vehicle of a Jewish resident were riddled with bullets.”

Beyond that disclosure, details of the case have not been previously reported.

Lapinski has not been charged in the August 2024 shooting, and it was not clear how prosecutors linked him to the case.

Last week, a federal judge in Miami sentenced Lapinski to 25 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm as a convicted felon, possession of a firearm by a person subject to a court order, possession of an unregistered silencer, and possession of body armor by a violent felon.

Lapinski had illegally stockpiled weapons, drafted a manifesto with antisemitic rhetoric, and kept attack plans containing numerous Jewish targets, including U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Parkland resident.

Inside Lapinski’s Margate home, police had found maps scrawled with racial slurs targeting Black and Jewish people, as well as a “target list” naming “groups to attack” based on race and religion, prosecutors said. On the list were local synagogues and Jewish schools, Jewish-owned businesses, a Jewish cemetery, and other religious and ethnically identified sites, court papers show.

The case against Lapinski began on October 31, 2024, when Margate Police responded to a call of shots fired near his home. Officers determined Lapinski — legally barred from possessing firearms because of his criminal record — had been firing a gun outdoors.

They soon discovered his arsenal of weapons and incriminating records in his residence, police said.

Unbeknownst to police at the time, Lapinski had shot up the homes and vehicles of the Jewish Margate resident’s home less than two months earlier.

According to police records, investigators collected a number of bullets and bullet fragments from the damaged home and vehicles. No shell casings were found, records show, which can indicate a shooting was a drive-by attack.

Surveillance footage from a neighbor’s security camera captured the sound of 12 gunshots, but did not provide visual evidence due to the camera’s positioning, according to the records

Additional canvassing of the neighborhood and city surveillance cameras yielded no further leads, the records state.

At the time, the adults living in the home told police they had no known conflicts with anyone and were unsure why their home was targeted.

Prosecutors have not released any additional information about the shooting or how the home came to be targeted.

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Author Profile

Kevin Deutsch

Kevin Deutsch is an award-winning journalist and author of two nonfiction books. He covers general assignment news and Jewish community issues for Talk Media. He has also worked as a staff writer at The Miami Times, the Rio Grande SUN, the New York Daily News, Newsday, The Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, The Riverdale Press, and Bronx Justice News.