An Irvine man accused of unprovoked Iranian-American-on-Latinos hate crimes reportedly pleaded guilty to charges that will have him spending 120 days in detention and three years on probation.
Sure beats seven years in state prison, which is what 33-year-old Arash Riazati was possibly looking at had he been convicted on all counts the Orange County District Attorney's office originally sought.
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Riazati had a run-in with Hispanics at a movie
theater in Los Angeles County on May 28, 2010. Still seething around midnight as he sat in the passenger
seat of his
girlfriend's car at Jamboree Road and Barranca
Parkway in Tustin, he looked out the window at an uncle and his teenage nephew in a car stopped three
lanes away. A now-enraged Riazati picked up a metal chain, got out of his girlfriend's car and rushed over and struck the driver's rear side door of the car holding the Latino fellows.
Both occupants were extremely frightened, but fortunately no one suffered injuries before the uncle managed to speed away. Riazati did not know the pair, and they did not know Riazati. And, it may have been one of those unreported hateful acts people with brown
skin are subjected to daily around these parts had an Irvine Police sergeant not witnessed the whole thing.
That led to an investigation, Riazati's arrest and his being originally charged with one felony count of
aggravated assault, one felony count of hate crime motivated aggravated
assault with present ability to commit violent injury, one misdemeanor
count of possession of a controlled substance without prescription, one
misdemeanor count of violation of civil rights by causing property
damage, and sentencing enhancements and allegations that the aggravated
assault was a hate crime. He was originally held in lieu of $50,000 bail.
The Orange County Register reports that Riazati pleaded guilty Monday only to felony assault with a sentencing
enhancement for committing the attack for racial reasons and
misdemeanor being in possession of a controlled substance without a
prescription.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.