As if Hispanics don't feel ganged up on already (see Arizona, every “Racist OC Register Fustercluck of the Day,” every other Navel Gazing comment), now they apparently have to worry about Iranian-Americans.
Or, at least the one from Irvine charged with a hate crime.
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According to the account provided by the Orange County District Attorney's Office:
Arash Riazati had some kind of altercation with Hispanics at a movie
theater on May 28. The 31-year-old was still seething as he sat in the passenger
side of his
girlfriend's car around midnight at the intersection of Jamboree Road and Barranca
Parkway in Tustin near the District.
Upon seeing two Hispanics, an uncle and his teenage nephew, sitting inside a car stopped three lanes away, Riazati allegedly became enraged. He is accused of getting out of his girlfriend's car while holding a metal
chain, approaching the driver's side of the vehicle with the two people so offensive to him inside and
striking the driver's rear side door.
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.
It might have been one of those unreported hateful acts people with brown skin are subjected to daily around these parts. Unfortunately for Riazati, an Irvine Police sergeant just happened to be in the area–and he saw the whole thing unfold.
That led to an Irvine Police Department investigation, which led to Riazati being arraigned Wednesday for an alleged unprovoked hate crime attack.
He has been 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.
Riazati's outburst could get him up to seven years in state prison if he is convicted of all charges. His bail was set at $50,000.
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.