A 51-year-old Clarendon Hills man was cited for disorderly conduct after Westmont police say he wielded an ax outside an apartment building to intimidate a neighbor, then told an officer the neighbor isn't "even an American."

The man, who lives in the 600 block of 56th Place in Clarendon Hills, owns the apartment building at 201 S. Cass Ave. in Westmont where the incident took place on a Saturday evening in July, according to a Westmont police report obtained by Patch through a public records request.

The dispute started over garbage. Three days before the ax incident, the man called police after he saw his neighbor's son toss a small bag of trash into the apartment building's dumpster. Police learned the neighbor considered the two men longtime friends and did not believe there would have been a problem.

On the Saturday evening in question, Westmont officers responded to the apartment building. The man told police he had gotten into a dispute with the nearby homeowner over the garbage and then "exercised" with an ax in front of the building. When the officer asked why he didn't work out at his own home in Clarendon Hills, the man said he wanted to show the neighbor how strong he was.

He claimed the ax was a Halloween prop. The responding officer noted a reasonable person would believe it was real.

The officer determined the man's actions were intentionally intimidating. Then the man made the comment that elevated the encounter beyond a neighborhood spat: "He's not even an American. That's what pisses me off," he told the officer, according to the police report.

The officer told the man the neighbor's status was irrelevant, advised him on how to handle the dumping dispute properly and barred him from the neighbor's property. The man was cited for misdemeanor disorderly conduct but was not arrested.

No hate crime charge was filed. Under Illinois law, a hate crime requires that a person commit a specified offense "by reason of" the victim's actual or perceived race, religion, national origin or other protected characteristic. The DuPage County State's Attorney's office has not publicly addressed why the Westmont case did not meet that threshold.

The incident surfaced in a broader Aug. 11 Patch report on bias-motivated incidents in the western suburbs. DuPage County has seen at least three other hate-related cases in 2026: a Lombard man charged with hate crime and aggravated battery after an attack at a bakery in March, a Plainfield man charged with two counts of hate crime in June after yelling a racial slur at a 9-year-old in Naperville, and a Tinley Park woman charged with two counts of aggravated assault and one hate crime count after threatening a Muslim woman in La Grange in May.

State's Attorney Robert Berlin said in March, when announcing the Lombard bakery case, that bias-motivated behavior will never be tolerated in DuPage County and that his office stands ready to file charges for attacks based on race, religion, sexual orientation or other characteristics.

The Clarendon Hills man's name has not been published. No court date or case number is publicly available. Residents can check the citation's status through the DuPage County Circuit Clerk's office or file a public records request with the Westmont Police Department, 500 N. Cass Ave., Westmont.