Shiloh village trustee says post circulating on social media was a ‘malicious attack’
A Shiloh village board trustee said he did not make a racist post circulating on social media Thursday morning.
The post on a Fairview Heights neighborhood social media page used a racist slur and suggested humans were for sale. The Nextdoor post was made under a profile with Trustee Kurt Burrelsman’s name. Screenshots of the post, which Nextdoor removed, were later shared on Facebook.
Burrelsman, 62, said he suspected someone hacked into his profile. He uses Nextdoor periodically to see “who seen the last coyote in the neighborhood” or keep up with local information, but says he has never posted.
“I would hope that anybody who knows me would know I would never post anything like that,” Burrelsman said.
The trustee says it would have taken him “an hour” to figure out how to post on the site. Burrelsman said he planned to file a police report and “do whatever it takes to apprehend the person responsible because it’s a malicious attack.”
Burrelsman said he couldn’t think of anyone who would want to attack him and hasn’t had any confrontations recently. He wasn’t aware of the post until Mayor Jim Vernier called him about it Thursday morning.
“We’re going to do our best to get to the bottom of this,” Vernier said.
A statement on the village’s Facebook page said Shiloh condemns racism and is “saddened by such an evil attack being associated with our community.”
A spokesperson for Nextdoor said the post was immediately reported and removed, and the site disabled the account.
“To be clear, Nextdoor does not tolerate racism, hateful language, or discrimination of any kind,” a Nextdoor spokesperson said in an email.
The company declined to share any additional information about the account.
JD Dixon, a write-in candidate for Belleville mayor, shared the screenshots on Facebook and said they were evidence of racism in local government.
Burrelsman, who was reelected in 2019, is not up for reelection until 2023.
This story was originally published January 28, 2021 at 12:54 PM.
