Fresno County raisin heir arrested over alleged threats to rabbi

The arrest of Bruce Lion, a 64-year-old heir to the Lion Raisin Company, is reverberating far beyond a Pacific Palisades street and into Fresno County’s Jewish community, where the case has sharpened concerns about antisemitic threats and neighborhood safety. Rabbi Zushe Cunin, who lives next door to Lion, said the situation had been building for months before Lion’s June 13 arrest outside his Los Angeles County home.

Authorities said Lion was booked into the Los Angeles County Jail on charges including threatening force based on beliefs and making criminal threats with intent to terrorize. He remained in custody after the arrest, and the arraignment scheduled for Tuesday was postponed. Lion was expected back in court Wednesday.

Cunin said Lion had lived next door since March and described a pattern of troubling conduct that included racial slurs, intimidation and threats. He said the confrontation escalated when Lion allegedly came at workers with a hammer and threatened to kill them while using antisemitic language. For a Jewish household next door, the allegations turned a neighborhood dispute into a direct question of security and hate-motivated intimidation.

The case also carries added weight in Fresno County because Lion comes from one of Central California’s most recognizable agricultural families. The Lion Raisin name has long been tied to the region’s raisin industry, and the arrest has placed that prominence under a harsher spotlight as residents absorb the allegations.

This was not Lion’s first encounter with law enforcement. In 2019, he was sentenced to two years’ probation after a plea deal that reduced 41 charges in six separate cases to one felony gun possession count and one misdemeanor criminal threat count. Prosecutors had filed those charges in cases dating back to September 2018, with allegations that included punching a cousin at the family business, violating restraining orders, keeping a shotgun after a court order barred him from owning guns, and being placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold.

Lion was arrested again in 2023 in Monterey County, where he was accused of throwing rocks at cars and assaulting construction workers. Taken together, the cases have deepened concern about the consequences of repeated threats and whether public safety systems can intervene before confrontations escalate.

For Fresno County’s Jewish community, the arrest has become more than a legal matter. It underscores how antisemitic threats can unsettle families and religious institutions, especially when they emerge from someone with local prominence and a documented history of violence.