A white student from the University of Maryland was charged by the police on the basis of on-campus stabbing death of a newly commissioned black US Army lieutenant, and the FBI is investigating the case expecting as a possible hate crime, the authorities said on Sunday.

Sean Urbanski, of the Severna Park, Maryland, is the suspect in the case and is facing a first-degree murder charge in the stabbing death of the Second Lieutenant Richard Collins III, aged 23, early on Saturday, said the University of Maryland Police Chief David Mitchell.

22-year-old Urbanski has approached Collins and also two friends on the campus sidewalk and told to Collins, who was commissioned as an officer on Thursday that, “Step left, step left if you know what’s good for you,” said Mitchell.

As the puzzled Collins said, “No,” Urbanski has stabbed Collins in the chest, the police chief told in a news conference. Collins, who was to graduate from the Maryland’s Bowie State University on Tuesday, was pronounced dead at the hospital, he said.

An investigation into the case showed that Urbanski was a part of the Alt-Reich Facebook group, which carries the racially and sexually charged material, and triggered an enquiry into whether the Collins’ death was a hate crime, said Mitchell.

The Facebook site “is despicable. It shows extreme bias against women, Latinos, members of the Jewish faith, and especially African-Americans,” Mitchell said.

Gordon Johnson, a special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s field office in the Baltimore, said that: “We are here to evaluate that, as an ongoing concern with respect to whether or not this was a hate crime.”

Urbanski was arrested by police on the campus, which is in the College Park, Maryland, Washington suburb. Urbanski is also charged with the second-degree murder and first-degree assault.

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Mrudula Duddempudi.