A Missouri man was sentenced in federal court on Thursday for committing a hate crime in which he attempted to kill a gay teenager by shooting the youth eight times.
Malachi Robinson, 25, of Kansas City, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes to 21 years and 10 months in prison, without parole, for the bias-motivated shooting.
Malachi Robinson pleaded guilty in July of last year to luring and shooting a youth identified only as M.S. in court documents eight times in Kansas City in May of 2019.
Robinson admitted he lured the youth to a secluded wooded area with the intent of shooting him because of his sexual orientation.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian C. Wimes sentenced Robinson, who has been in federal custody since he was indicted by a federal grand jury on August 10, 2021, to 262 months in federal prison without parole for violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
“This significant penalty brings a measure of justice to the young victim and to the larger LGBTQI+ community,”
U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore for the Western District of Missouri said in a statement.
“To ambush and shoot an unwitting victim, who posed no threat to him, for no other reason than his sexual orientation is reprehensible behavior that won’t be tolerated. Our entire community must stand together against acts of violence motivated by hatred for any group of people.”
Over the last two years, LGBTQ people, venues and events have increasingly become the targets of violence.
The FBI’s supplemental 2021 hate crime statistics found that hate crimes increased 11.6% nationally from 8,120 in 2020 to 9,065 in 2021. Out of over 10,500 single-bias incidents involving 12,411 victims, the majority — 64.5% — were targeted due to the offenders’ bias against their race, ethnicity or ancestry, followed by 15.9% who were targeted because of the offenders’ bias against their sexual orientation, 14.1% who were targeted because of the offenders’ bias against their religion, and 3.2% who were targeted due to the offenders’ bias against their gender identity.
Earlier this month, a man was stabbed in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in what police are investigating as a possible hate crime. LGBTQ venues, events and groups across the country — including a housing project for older adults in Boston — have been threatened or vandalized.
And in November, a gunman killed five people at an LGBTQ club In Colorado Springs, Colorado.
