Image courtesy of Aaditya Shah.

All Aaditya Shah wanted was to get his Shaw rowhouse painted. But when he canceled on the painting company after crew members said they’d be late, the owner turned on him and began sending him anti-Muslim messages. Shah has now contacted the police to open a felony threat investigation against the owner of a painting company.

It all began when Shah made an appointment with Paint1ng.com, a company he found on Craigslist, for Monday at 8 a.m. He got a call at 8:09 a.m. saying that the crew wouldn’t arrive for another 45 minutes.

“I told them I didn’t have time to wait around, and they told me to leave the door open or the key under the mat,” Shah says. He declined and said he would hire another crew instead. That’s when “the guy started losing it,” Shah said.

Shah provided DCist with the texts he received, which quickly escalate from promises to arrive shortly to “Death to Muslims,” and “Get out of my country bitch,” with a photo of Shah from Facebook.

“I’m born and raised in D.C.,” says Shah. He is not Muslim, though people often think that he is. “I’m a big brown guy with a beard, so it happens to me all the time.”

Shah contacted the police when a man told him over the phone that he wanted to see him dead in the street. He says the police have opened an investigation into a felony threat.

D.C. Police declined to comment on an ongoing investigation.

Shah outlined the exchange on his Facebook page as well as a Reddit post that has since been removed because it included Paint1ng’s phone number (a violation of the site’s anti-doxxing rules).

DCist tried to contact the number that texted Shah, but got a recording saying that, “the wireless customer you are calling is not available.” We were able to reach someone after leaving a message at the number listed on Paint1ing’s advertisement. The owner of the company, who identified himself as Rich Trevor Dickey, returned our call.

“It wasn’t a threat, it was a statement,” says Dickey. “It was probably a bad thing to do, but it’s not a reflection of our business because we didn’t do any business with him. It’s more of a heat-of-the-moment deal. Of course it was the wrong thing to say but it’s just how I feel.”

“We tried to work things out several times with him. We were very thorough and professional. When we tried to reschedule, he told us he was hiring someone else,” continues Dickey. “It put a bad taste in my mouth. This guy threatened us with bad reviews, so I did some research and found out who he was.”

Dickey says that Shah’s social media postings have resulted in lots of angry calls to his business. “I’ve gotten harassed, believe me. And this guy was telling me he’s trying to ruin my company.”

Dickey told DCist not to publish anything about his exchange with Shah. “I don’t think there’s a story here unless you want to capitalize on the whole Muslim thing. I think if you do a story about this, we’ll get business from the people who aren’t fans of Muslims. There are a lot of people right now who don’t like Muslims, and they’ll probably be like, ‘Hell yeah, let me give you some business.'”

Even if Paint1ing doesn’t get that business, Dickey says he’s not worried. “I’ll just simply change my domain name and business name.”

Dickey called DCist back about 20 minutes after the conversation ended, saying that he had looked me up (though he confused me with DCist’s Rachel Sadon), and wanted to know if there would be a story coming out.

“Well you can put this in the story: I’m going to find out everyone involved in DCist and do some research on you now,” he says. “Whatever future jobs you might want, they’re going to see some things on the internet. Eventually, it’s going to bite you in the butt.”