A federal grand jury found a Florida man guilty on hate crime charges for a “racially motivated” attack on a Black man traveling with his family in Seminole, 24 miles west of Tampa, the US justice department announced on Thursday.
The Black man, identified only by as “JT”, was driving with his daughter and girlfriend last August when Jordan Patrick Leahy, 29, spewed racial slurs and attempted to run him off the road for nearly a mile.
The two drivers then encountered each other at a light, where Leahy got out of his car and “tried to assault” the Black man as he continued to yell racist invective, prosecutors said.
Hate crimes, especially against Black, Asian and Jewish Americans, climbed across the US throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
This summer saw a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, where Payton Gendron, who is white, shot and killed 10 people at a grocery store in the predominantly Black east end of the city.
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, previously told the Guardian hate crimes against Black Americans in particular surged in 2021. Black people were the most targeted group in most cities. In New York, antisemitic crimes were highest.
The federal government has stepped up prosecution of hate crime cases. In July, a federal grand jury indicted Gendron on more than two dozen hate and firearm counts.
In Florida, the Pinellas county sheriff’s office officials told the Tampa Bay Times Leahy used a Nazi salute and pretended to shoot the Black man he confronted. Once in custody, police said, Leahy threatened to conduct a mass shooting.
Leahy said he wanted to “fight a random colored person” and that deputies “needed to control them”, the Times reported, citing an affidavit.
“Across America, families must be able to freely travel our public streets without fear of being attacked because of race,” the US assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke said in a statement.
“This verdict should send a strong message that the Department of Justice remains firmly committed to prosecuting, to the fullest extent of the law, those who would use violence to enforce heinous racist beliefs.”
Leahy faces up to 10 years in federal prison, three years of supervised release and up to $250,000 in fines.
