A 21-year-old Texas man pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges after he brutally attacked and blamed an Asian family whom he believed to be Chinese for the Covid-19 pandemic, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
Highlights
- Jose Gomez III saw a Burmese family with three young children enter a Sam’s Club in Texas.
- He followed them into the store and attacked the family, slashing the father and a child who was then 6 years old.
- Gomez later admitted to authorities he had attacked them and that he intended to kill the father.
- He now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison; his attorney declined to comment on the guilty pleas when reached by CNN.
- Anti-Asian hate crimes across the US have risen since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, including attacks on Asian Americans, who are often targeted and erroneously blamed for the pandemic.