A 19-year-old Hispanic Texas man upset about the Covid-19 pandemic who followed a Burmese family into a store and attacked them with knives in March 2020 because he thought they were Chinese was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison (read story here).
Jose Gomez III, now 21 (photo, left), was charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault with hate-crime enhancements. (Read original 2020 reporting of the incident here.)
CNN says “Gomez grabbed kitchen knives that were being sold at the store” and slashed the father and a 6-year-old child. He also stabbed a store employee trying to intervene in the leg. After the attack, while being restrained, he yelled, “Get out of America!”
He later admitted he targeted “whoever I think came from the country who started spreading the disease around,” CNN reported. Hate crimes like this surged during the pandemic. Trump’s calling Covid-19 a “Chinese virus” didn’t help. But it wasn’t just people of Chinese ancestry who were at risk. To countless racist morons like Gomez, all Asians looked alike.
Well, if he wants to play that game, here’s a suggestion: Send his ass back to Mexico. Born in the USA? A U.S. citizen? Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t “look” American. Not from Mexico? From Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador? Who cares, he has a “Mexican sounding name.” See how that works, Jose?
But his crimes change everything. Now, citizen or not, he’s a guest of the U.S. government for the next quarter-century. And he probably won’t be invited to join a white supremacist gang while he’s in there. In a racist world, life isn’t fair.