A 56-year-old Beaver man is facing felony hate crime charges after Beaver County sheriff's deputies say he spent weeks stalking, threatening and harassing a family that lived in the upstairs portion of his split-level home, allegedly yelling racial slurs at their front door and throwing a rock at a toy car with a child sitting inside it. Heath Loren Franklin was charged Tuesday in 5th District Court with stalking with a weapon, a second-degree felony, along with aggravated assault, two counts of child abuse and a misdemeanor assault count, each carrying a victim targeting penalty enhancement if he is convicted.
Doorbell Video and Weeks of Alleged Harassment
According to KSL, Beaver County sheriff's deputies opened their investigation into Franklin on October 16 after being called to address disorderly conduct, racial comments and harassment of neighbors, per charging documents. Investigators later reviewed doorbell camera footage recorded on October 2 that charging documents say showed Franklin knocking a phone out of a child's hand and throwing a rock at the toy car the child was sitting in. The same documents say Franklin harassed two other children in the front yard, was heard yelling racial slurs toward the residence's front door, and was seen messing with the children's toys on the front porch. Prosecutors say Franklin lived in the basement portion of the split-level home, which had a separate entrance from the victims' upstairs living area, and that deputies also became aware of a previous alleged assault involving a juvenile victim.
Traffic Stop Leads to Weapons Stash
Franklin's legal troubles compounded Monday when he was pulled over for allegedly running a stop sign and driving on a denied license, according to the booking affidavit cited by the Beaver article. During that stop, a deputy reportedly found nunchucks behind the passenger seat of his truck and a baseball bat with a strap bolted onto its end. Franklin told the deputy he was not allowed to own firearms because he is a felon, the affidavit states, referencing his 2020 conviction for felony aggravated harassment.
Search warrants were later served on Franklin's residence, vehicle and storage units, per the affidavit, and investigators recovered a combat-style fixed blade knife, a .22 rifle, an older-model double-barrel shotgun, a second combat-style fixed blade knife, brass knuckles and an ammunition can containing various rounds. Those findings led to a second case against Franklin, in which he was charged Tuesday with eight counts of prohibited dangerous weapon conduct — two third-degree felonies and six class A misdemeanors — along with driving on a denied license, a class C misdemeanor, and three traffic infractions.
How Utah's Victim-Targeting Law Works
The enhancement attached to Franklin's charges stems from a Utah statute that allows prosecutors to seek tougher sentencing when a defendant intentionally selects a victim based on perceived personal attributes, including perceived national origin, as KSL has reported in a separate case. That same mechanism was used in 2023 against Robert Lowell Wolcott, a Utah man accused of spitting on a woman and her 7-year-old son because they were dressed in traditional Muslim clothing; Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said at the time that prosecutors would pursue victim-targeting enhancement penalties rather than charge Wolcott under Utah's broader hate-crime statute.
A similar enhancement surfaced this year in the case of Damyen Vainuku, an 18-year-old charged after allegedly stalking a former classmate because of his sexual orientation, according to PinkNews. Charging documents in that case identified 13 specific alleged threats of firearm violence, and Vainuku faced six third-degree felony counts of prohibited dangerous weapon conduct along with stalking, threat-of-violence and harassment charges — the latter two upgraded under the same victim-targeting statute after prosecutors alleged the victim was intentionally targeted over his sexual orientation.
Bias Cases Described as Underreported Statewide
Utah's crime dashboard has logged 47 reported offender-bias categories so far in 2026, a figure that describes reported categories rather than a confirmed count of hate-crime incidents. Combined LGBTQ-related bias categories accounted for 10 of those reports, the most of any listed category, while anti-Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bias was next with nine. District Attorney Gill has said the broader trend reflects a crime type that is both rising and chronically undercounted. “Hate crimes have been rising around the nation,” Gill said. “They're targeting different communities, and they're one of the most underreported crimes.”
