SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A veteran of the Iraq war deliberately broke into a group of pedestrians because he thought some people were Muslim, California authorities said Friday.
Isaiah Joel Peoples, 34, faces eight counts of attempted murder for wounding eight people, four of whom are still hospitalized. The most seriously injured victim is a 13-year-old South Asian girl in Sunnyvale who is in a coma with severe head trauma.
"New evidence shows that the accused intentionally targeted the victims because of their race and belief in being Muslim," said Sunnyvale Police Chief Phan Ngo.
Peoples briefly appeared in Santa Clara County Superior Court on Friday. He has not pleaded and is currently being held without bail.
The former US Army sniper has suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq, his family said. The People's Advocate, Chuck Smith, said on Friday that the accident was by no means deliberate.
Smith said after the hearing that they were not disputing what had happened, but that the mental state of his client was the problem.
"He served our country honorably and admirably, and he led an otherwise blameless life," Smith said. "So there is no explanation for that other than his service, what he saw and what happened to him mentally while he was serving our country."
People were on their way to a Bible class on Tuesday in the suburb of Sunnyvale, Silicon Valley, when he told investigators that he had deliberately entered a group of men, women and children. children, the police said. The 13-year-old girl was hit with her father and brother, slightly injured.
Related: Vintage New York Daily News crime photos
13PICTURES
Vintage Crime Photos from The Daily News
See gallery
UNITED STATES – MARCH 03: Slayer confessed enraged. William Patrick Farrell screams as he rushes to fotog taking his picture in a pickup truck in front of the police headquarters. Police say Farrell, 25, a father of two, reconstructed for them the murder of New York University student Ann Yarrow last month. Farrell, a patient at Bellevue Hospital twice before, was again ordered to go to Bellevue. (Photo by Al Amy / NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
UNITED STATES – MARCH 25: Leon Liss, Barney Mortillaro, Milton (Shuffles), Goldberg, Louis Liss, Pasquale Chicarelli and gang leader Richard Reese Whittemore (from left to right) in a police queue, after being involved in a W. 48th St. Gem (Photo: New York Daily Archives via Getty Images)
United States – January 09: Theodore A. Clement at the back of a paddy police wagon after allegedly shot a man at a poker game. (Photo by Al Amy / NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
United States – January 20: Isadore Strauss in prison cell at police headquarters after his arrest for murder and robbery in connection with Whittemore gang work. (Photo by Paul Levine / NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
United States – November 04: Abe (Kid Twist) Reles (center) in a rant of the police. (Photo by NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
United States – CIRCA 2000: Abraham Weissman, owner of an alcoholic beverage store, looks at the body of the young man, Otis Mims, whom he shot during an attempted robbery. (Photo by Gary Kagan / NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
United States – September 1: Mass murderer Harry F. Powers, the butcher of Clarksburg, tells a detective details of his macabre murders in Clarksburg, West Virginia (photo from NY Daily Archive via Getty Images)
United States – October 19: Nela Bogacki, aka Nella Bogart, Madame of the "Continental Calling Ring", handcuffed to Salema Hontover after being seized by the F.B.I. Both must be deported for illegal entry. (Photo by Al Amy / NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
USA – OCTOBER 25: The body of Albert Anastasia – in the late 1930s – who ruled Murder, Inc., a group of organized crime killers – is based on the Park Sheraton barber's lounge, shortly after his assassination by two armed men at 10:20 am (Photo by NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
United States – April 20: LeRoy Luscomb, handcuffed, is charged with first degree murder after the murder of his wife with a rifle. His wife is on the bed at the back of the photo., (Photo: NY Daily Archives by Getty Images)
(Original caption) When John Kerr of 147 W 84th Street and Peter Macon of 490 Columbus Avenue were charged with assault, photographer Phil Grietzer of the New York Daily News drew a pearl on the procedure with his camera. He did not know that the boys had an allergy to the camera. But he found that the two men, although handcuffed together, came to charge him. Another photographer who does not suffer from Buck's fever, had this picture.
United States – Dec. 16: Driver and Bodyguard Thomas Bilotti is in the street next to the car after he and crime chief Paul Castellano were shot dead outside the East Side steakhouse. (Photo by Thomas Monaster / NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
HIDE CAPTION
SHOW CAPTION
Jay Boyarsky, Deputy Attorney General of Santa Clara, said the charges were punishable by life imprisonment. He stated that they would file allegations of hate crimes if that were warranted.
"There is very shocking and disturbing evidence that at least one or two of these victims were targeted because of the accused's opinion of their race or religion," he said. .
Three adults are also hospitalized with broken limb injuries.
People showed no remorse after his car hit a group of people in a pedestrian crossing at high speed before hitting a tree, Ngo said.
Witness Don Draper stated that he had headed for Peoples' car after his accident and that he had found the driver muttering over and over again: "Thank you, Jesus Thank you Jesus."
But Ngo said that he "did not behave in a way that would be considered bizarre" when he was arrested.
Family and friends described Peoples as being calm and polite and expressed their astonishment at his involvement. His mother, Leevell Peoples of Sacramento, said his son had "had a bad episode" with PTSD in 2015, for which he had been hospitalized.
Peoples was deployed to Iraq in 2005 and 2006.
Peoples were honorably released from the military, and police were investigating the PTSD report, Ngo said. People had no criminal record and possessed only one weapon, a disassembled and unusable shotgun that was in the trunk of his vehicle, according to the police chief.
___
Juliet Williams, a writer with the Associated Press in San Francisco, contributed to this report.
More than Aol.com:
Holder of a hidden porter's license murders an attempt to hijack a car in Chicago: police
