A tattoo artist linked to racist graffiti through the handwriting on his gun permit shot himself in the head last week, according to multiple reports. He survived the incident.
Raymond "Raynard" Stevens walked into a Hopkington, N.H., cemetery on Nov. 7 and shot himself in the head, according to the Concord Monitor. Though he lived through the apparent suicide attempt, he has been hospitalized, the Monitor reports, and his condition is unknown.
Stevens, 43, who owns TaTToomB tattoo parlor in Nashua, N.H., faces up to 30 years in jail for his vandalism because it was considered a hate crime under New Hampshire state law. On Tuesday, his lawyer entered a plea of not guilty to the felony charge of criminal mischief, The Associated Press reports.
The small business owner was arrested last month for allegedly writing racist messages in black Sharpie on the homes of African immigrants in a Concord, N.H. neighborhood in 2011 and 2012 multiple sources report. Police say Stevens lived in the neighborhood at the time.
“You are not welcome here. you lower the value and safety of our good town you are proven to be subhumans," said one of the graffiti scrawls Stevens is accused of writing, according to CBS Boston. "We are sick of Paying for your free ride.”
Stevens was connected to the hateful messages only recently, when local and federal investigators matched the graffiti handwriting to the handwriting on Stevens' gun permit.
According to his affidavit, investigators searched his house and business to find other handwriting samples they say matched that on the defaced walls. They saw that messages on his Facebook page were "clearly indicative of a white supremacist ideology," the AP reports.
Even now, the tattooed suspect's Facebook page contains intolerant proclamations. "[I]slam ruins life for everyone involved or not," says one post that includes a link to the news story of the two British teens who were victims of an acid attack in Zanzibar. "Such fools we are, to pander to them just because they're a 'religion,'" Stevens wrote.
Stevens was also a singer in the heavy metal band Inverticrux, which says its music "on one hand is hard to take seriously, but on the other is as serious as a gunshot wound to the head."
WATCH: Raymond "Raynard" Stevens gives a tour of his Nashua, N.H., tattoo parlor TaTToomB.