An Iowa racist who tried to kill two children with her car got 25 years in prison for her crimes, The Hill reported on Saturday, May 29, 2021 (read story here). The children, a 12-year-old black boy and a 14-year-old Latina girl, were injured but not killed in separate attacks on December 9, 2019.
The attacker, Nicole Marie Poole Franklin (photo), 43, targeted the children because of their race and drove onto sidewalks to hit them.
Later, she went to a gas station where she made racist remarks and threw objects at the clerk, a local TV station reported at the time (story here).
Poole, who pled guilty to attempted murder, attacked the female victim because “she believed the girl was Mexican,” The Hill said. Her attorney told the judge “she believed conservative media outlets that portrayed immigrants as invaders.”
He also said Poole “would’ve been in Washington storming the Capitol” on January 6, 2021, except she was in jail at the time.
Update (8/18/21): A federal judge gave Poole an identical sentence, to run concurrently, on federal hate crime charges. Poole, who has a history of mental illness and drug use, stabbed a boyfriend in 2017 and threatened another boyfriend with a knife. Read story here.