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    Man With Neo-Nazi Ties Sentenced to Life in Killing of Gay Ex-Classmate

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    Samuel Woodward, who espoused anti-gay rhetoric and had ties to Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi group, stabbed his victim 28 times in a hate-fueled murder, prosecutors said.A California man who expressed allegiance to a neo-Nazi group and espoused anti-gay rhetoric was sentenced to life in prison on Friday after a jury found him guilty of brutally killing a former high school classmate who was gay in a hate-motivated murder, the Orange County District Attorney’s office said.The man, Samuel Lincoln Woodward, 26, of Newport Beach, Calif., had reconnected with his former classmate, Blaze Bernstein, then a 19-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania, on a dating app for men seeking men, the authorities said.On the evening of Jan. 2, 2018, Mr. Woodward drove Mr. Bernstein, who believed they were going on a romantic encounter, to a park in Lake Forest, Calif., where Mr. Woodward brutally stabbed Mr. Bernstein 28 times and buried his body in a shallow grave in the park, the district attorney’s office said.On Friday, more than four months after a jury found Mr. Woodward guilty of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement, a judge in the Superior Court of Orange County sentenced Mr. Woodward to life in prison without parole, according to court records.“With every hateful stab of his knife, Samuel Woodward stabbed at the very heart of our entire community,” Todd Spitzer, the district attorney for Orange County, said in a statement.He added that “those who commit acts of hate against others will be punished and those who are victimized by hate will be protected.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Sentenced to Life in Prison for Transgender Woman’s Killing

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      The man, Daqua Lameek Ritter, was the first person in the country to be convicted of a federal hate crime based on gender identity.A South Carolina man who was the first person in the United States to be convicted of a federal hate crime based on gender identity was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for the killing of a transgender woman in 2019, the authorities said.According to the government, the man, Daqua Lameek Ritter, fatally shot the woman, Dime Doe, after word spread in Allendale, S.C., that the two were in a sexual relationship. Mr. Ritter had pleaded not guilty but was convicted of a hate crime in the murder of Ms. Doe by a jury in February 2024.Adair Ford Boroughs, the U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina, said in a statement on Thursday that “from the smallest of communities, like Allendale, to anywhere in South Carolina where hate and injustice occur,” civil rights must be protected.“We will continue to fight for the rights of those targeted because of their race, their religion, their gender identity or sexual orientation, or their ability,” Ms. Boroughs said.In a sentencing memo, lawyers for Mr. Ritter requested that he not spend life in prison. The Associated Press reported that prosecutors had asked for a life sentence without parole, based on federal sentencing guidelines.Lawyers listed in court documents for Mr. Ritter did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday evening.According to prosecutors, Mr. Ritter, who is from New York City, spent time in Allendale while visiting his grandmother and became close with Ms. Doe, who grew up in the town and worked as a hairdresser. Mr. Ritter sought to keep their relationship secret, court documents said. He did not want his girlfriend or the community to know about it and became “irate” after Ms. Doe publicized it, according to the documents.Many of his friends mocked him, and witnesses said that Mr. Ritter threatened to harm Ms. Doe as a result, according to court documents. Mr. Ritter eventually lured Ms. Doe to a remote area in Allendale and shot her three times in the head, prosecutors said. Afterward, he burned the clothes he had worn during the crime, disposed of the murder weapon and repeatedly lied to investigators, according to federal prosecutors.Mr. Ritter’s lawyers argued that there were inconsistencies in the government’s case. But after several hours of deliberation, a jury found Mr. Ritter guilty of Ms. Doe’s murder. He was also convicted of obstructing justice and using a firearm in connection with the killing.Transgender people are four times as likely to experience violence, including rape and sexual assault, according to a 2021 study by the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law.Federal officials have previously prosecuted hate crimes based on gender identity, but Mr. Ritter’s case was the first in the country to make it to trial in which someone was charged with a hate crime based on gender identity, officials said. More

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      College Investigating Report of a Student Scratching a Racial Slur on Another

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      A family says their son, a member of the swim team at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, was victimized when a teammate etched the slur across his chest with a box cutter. School administrators at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania are investigating a report of a student scratching a racial slur onto another student’s chest at an on-campus residence this month.Both the student who wrote the slur and the student who was scratched were on the swim team at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pa. The school and the family of the targeted student said in a joint statement on Sunday that the investigation was almost finished and that the student who scratched the slur was no longer enrolled at the college. It was not immediately clear whether the student was expelled or had decided to leave.The names of the students have not been made public. The family of the targeted student had said in a statement published on Friday in The Gettysburgian, the college newspaper, that their son became “the victim of a hate crime” when a teammate used a box cutter to etch a slur against Black people across their son’s chest at an informal swim team gathering on Sept. 6. They said that their son had been the only person of color at the gathering and that the teammate had been a “trusted” friend. Their son was later interviewed by members of the swim team’s coaching staff and then dismissed from the team, according to their statement. It was unclear on Sunday whether his status had changed. The school and the family are now having conversations about “how most constructively to move forward,” they said on Sunday. “The college and the family both recognize the gravity and seriousness of this situation and hope it can serve as a transformative moment for our community and beyond,” the statement read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      India’s Epidemic of Cow Vigilantism Unnerves Nation’s Muslims

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      An unexpectedly narrow victory at the polls for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-first agenda has not cooled simmering sectarian tensions, as some had hoped.A recent series of attacks by Hindus on Muslims in India have highlighted how sectarian violence remains a serious problem, even as the country seeks to define itself on the world stage as a robust democracy with equal rights for all.Despite a close election victory in June by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that many interpreted as a rebuff, there have been numerous instances of such violence, according to India-focused human rights organizations and a New York Times tally of local news reports. At least a dozen involve so-called cow vigilantism — violence related to the slaughter or smuggling of cows, or the suspicion of such acts.In August, a group of Hindu men beat up a 72-year-old Muslim man because they believed he was carrying beef in his bag. Also that month, a group that describes themselves as cow protectors fatally shot a 19-year-old Hindu student because they thought he was a Muslim smuggling cows, according to his family.The cow issue is deeply divisive because it pits the religious beliefs of one group against the diet of another. Cows are sacred in Hinduism, especially among its upper castes, and many Indian states ban their slaughter, as well as the sale or smuggling of beef. But beef is consumed by many Muslims. Religious violence is not rare in India, where more than one billion Hindus, around 200 million Muslims, 30 million Christians, 25 million Sikhs and other religious minorities coexist, sometimes uneasily.Under Mr. Modi, who has pursued a Hindu nationalist agenda since coming to power in 2014, Muslims have increasingly become a target for hard-line Hindu groups affiliated with his Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. Hundreds of instances of religious violence, including lynching, beating and abuse, occur every year, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      3 More Victims of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Found With Gunshot Wounds

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      Officials are exhuming bodies to learn more about the victims of one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history.Three victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, whose remains were exhumed along with those of eight others, were found to have gunshot wounds, investigators announced on Friday, in the latest findings from research about one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history.G.T. Bynum, the mayor of Tulsa, Okla., announced in 2018 that the city would begin searching for and analyzing the bodies of victims of the massacre to learn more about their identities and causes of death.Between 36 and 300 people are thought to have died during the massacre, officials have said, however only 26 death certificates were issued in connection to it.“The people that we are searching for, our fellow Tulsans, they’re not just names in history,” Mr. Bynum said at a news conference on Friday. “These are our neighbors who were murdered in horrible ways.”Investigators are looking for “simple wooden caskets” that fit a variety of parameters that could indicate a possible victim of the massacre, according to Kary Stackelbeck, a state archaeologist.“Two of those gunshot victims display evidence of munitions from two different weapons, meaning that those two individuals were shot with at least two different kinds of arms,” Dr. Stackelbeck said. “The third individual who is a gunshot victim also displays evidence of burning.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jewish Man Charged With Attempted Murder in Attacks on Muslim Neighbor

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      Izak Kadosh faces more than 40 charges, many of them hate crimes, including attempted murder and aggravated assault. Prosecutors said the attacks, in Brooklyn, went on for months.A Jewish man in Brooklyn was arrested and charged with attempted murder and hate crimes after repeatedly attacking his Muslim neighbor over several months, ultimately breaking into the neighbor’s apartment and striking him so hard with a mallet that he had internal bleeding, according to a criminal complaint.The man, Izak Kadosh, was arrested on Saturday, two days after he broke into the apartment, according to police officials. Mr. Kadosh faces more than 40 charges, including attempted murder, aggravated harassment, hate-crime assault and intent to damage property.Mr. Kadosh pleaded not guilty to all of the charges in Kings County Criminal Court on Monday. Bail was set at $25,000 cash or a $125,000 partially secured bond. He is being held on Rikers Island and is due to appear in court again on Friday.A lawyer for Mr. Kadosh declined to comment on the case.The neighbor who was attacked, Ahmed Faycal Chebira, said the harassment started soon after he moved into the building, in the Crown Heights neighborhood, in October. Mr. Chebira, who is from Algeria, said Mr. Kadosh would call him “dirty Arab” or “dirty Muslim” and spit on him.“I told him, leave me alone,” Mr. Chebira, 50, said in Arabic on Wednesday. “Everyone has their own religion in America; I don’t have a problem with anyone.”“I feel relieved now that they caught him,” Mr. Chebira continued, adding that he was in the hospital when he learned about the arrest. “I was afraid that I would leave the hospital and he would be outside.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Woman Tried to Drown 3-Year-Old Girl After Making Racist Comments, Police Say

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      A Texas woman tried to drown the child in the pool of an apartment complex last month, the police said. The child’s mother said her family was Palestinian and Muslim.A woman in Texas was charged with attempted capital murder after she tried to drown a 3-year-old girl in an apartment complex pool after making racist comments, officials said.Mustafaa Carroll, the executive director of the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said at a news conference on Saturday that the girl was attacked by a white woman who made the comments to the girl’s mother, who was wearing a hijab, a head scarf worn by Muslim women.Mr. Carroll called on national and state law enforcement officials to open a hate crime investigation into the attack, which took place on May 19 in Euless, Texas, a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth.Witnesses told detectives that the woman, Elizabeth Wolf, 42, had tried to drown a child and had argued with the child’s mother, the Euless Police Department said in a news release.Ms. Wolf was initially charged with public intoxication as she tried to leave the area, the police said. The Tarrant County criminal district attorney’s office filed charges of attempted capital murder and injury to a child on May 23, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.Ms. Wolf could not be immediately reached for comment on Sunday, and it was not clear if she had a lawyer. She was released on bail a day after she was arrested in May, according to CAIR-Texas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Killer of 2 Women in National Park in 1996 Has Been Identified, F.B.I. Says

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      A convicted serial rapist who died in an Ohio prison in 2018 was responsible for the murder of a couple at Shenandoah National Park in a case that initially was believed to be a hate crime.It took the authorities one week to find the bodies of Julianne Williams and Laura Winans near their campsite at a national park in Virginia in 1996 after their family reported them missing. But it would take nearly three decades for the authorities to identify the person they believe killed them.The F.B.I. office in Richmond on Thursday announced that new DNA evidence showed that Walter Leo Jackson Sr., a convicted serial rapist from Ohio who died in prison six years ago, had killed the couple in what initially was believed to have been an anti-gay hate crime and led to charges against another man that were eventually dropped by prosecutors in 2004.“After 28 years, we are now able to say who committed the brutal murders of Lollie Winans and Julie Williams in Shenandoah National Park,” Christopher R. Kavanaugh, the U.S. attorney for the western district of Virginia, said in a news release. “I want to again extend my condolences to the Winans and Williams families and hope today’s announcement provides some small measure of solace.”An F.B.I. investigative team revisited the case in 2021, the agency said. It re-examined previous leads and interviews and evidence recovered from the site of the killings. Investigators submitted some of the evidence for DNA testing and found a match to Mr. Jackson’s DNA, the agency said.“Even though we had this DNA match, we took additional steps and compared evidence from Lollie and Julie’s murders directly to a buccal swab containing Jackson’s DNA,” Stanley M. Meador, the F.B.I. special agent in charge in Richmond, said in a news release.Mr. Jackson, who painted homes for a living, died in an Ohio prison in March 2018, officials said. He had an extensive criminal history, including convictions for rape, kidnapping and assault.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Arizona Man Plotted Mass Shooting to Trigger ‘Race War,’ Officials Say

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      Prosecutors said Mark Adams Prieto of Arizona planned to target Black concertgoers at an Atlanta venue. He was indicted on hate crime and firearm charges.An Arizona man who planned to commit a mass shooting at an Atlanta rap concert as a way of inciting a “race war” has been indicted by a federal grand jury on hate crime and firearm charges.The man, Mark Adams Prieto, hatched a plan in several discussions with two people working with the F.B.I. who posed as racist extremists to carry out a mass shooting targeting Black people and other people of color at a concert in Atlanta on May 14 and May 15, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.Mr. Prieto intended for the shooting to incite a “race war” before the presidential election, prosecutors said in a news release.Mr. Prieto, 58, was reported to the authorities last year by an acquaintance who said he had made concerning comments calling for mass shootings targeting Black people and others, according to officials.Mr. Prieto faces two counts of trafficking in firearms, one count of transfer of a firearm for use in a hate crime and one count of possessing an unregistered firearm.He faces a maximum 15-year prison sentence for each firearm trafficking and transfer charge and a maximum 10-year sentence for the unregistered firearm charge, prosecutors said. Mr. Prieto also could be fined $250,000 for each count.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More