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EUGENE, Oregon – A Colorado truck driver who nearly killed a black man by cutting his neck in an unprovoked attack at a truck stop in eastern Oregon was sentenced Thursday to 16 years in federal prison.
Nolan Levi Strauss, 27, has pleaded guilty to a federal hate crime involving attempted murder, The Oregonian / OregonLive reported.
His lawyer argued that Strauss committed the crime because he was no longer taking mental health medication and had a manic episode. But prosecutors said there was no mistake about Strauss’s racial animosity during the December 21, 2019 ambush in Ontario.
Strauss, from Colorado Springs, entered Arby’s next to the Pilot Travel Center along Interstate 84 near the Idaho border and stabbed Ronnell Hughes in the neck.
Hughes grabbed his attacker’s hands and fought for control of the knife before he could free himself from Strauss. The truck stop workers overpowered Strauss.
Hughes was taken by ambulance to a local hospital and then flown by helicopter to Boise, Idaho, for emergency surgery.
While Strauss was immobilized, a worker asked him why he attacked a stranger, and Strauss replied, “Because he was black and I don’t like black people,” prosecutors said.
Hughes flew to Oregon from Jacksonville, Fla. On Wednesday night for sentencing and said he had never seen his attacker “because he had sneaked up behind me” while he was sitting there.
“I have no enemies and someone surprises me and tries to take my life… I’m angry, someone I don’t even know,” Hughes, 49, told the judge. of the United States District. Michael J. McShane in an Eugene courtroom.
The cut cut his jugular vein and injured his thyroid cartilage. Hughes needed months of physiotherapy to regain his voice and movement in his neck and arm.
The prosecutor played segments of a police interview with Strauss after his arrest as he continued to say he was targeting Hughes only because he was black and reiterated his disdain for black people, reciting a series of ‘epithets.
Strauss admitted in court that he had targeted Hughes because of the color of his skin.
“I am extremely sorry for what I did. I wouldn’t do this in my right frame of mind, ”he said. “I’m glad he survived.
Strauss said he had learned he had to “take his medication at all times”.
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