Two adult males from Los Angeles County ended up sentenced to federal prison soon after they pleaded responsible to assaulting five persons at a household-owned Turkish restaurant in Beverly Hills in 2020.
The males, 23-12 months-previous William Stepanyan of Glendale and 24-yr-old Harutyun Harry Chalikyan of Tujunga, pleaded responsible in October to throwing chairs, shouting ethnic slurs and threatening to get rid of people today at the cafe on Nov. 4, 2020.
The assault came although “long-simmering tensions in Turkish and Armenian communities escalated” all through the war among Armenia and Turkey-backed Azerbaijan, the U.S. Department of Justice mentioned in a news release.
“Earlier that working day, Stepanyan sent a text message stating that he prepared to go ‘hunting for [T]urks.’ … On arriving at the cafe, Stepanyan and Chalikyan stormed inside, threw hard picket chairs at the victims, smashed glassware, wrecked a plexiglass barrier, and overturned tables. One of the defendants requested the victims, ‘Are you Turkish?’ and shouted, ‘We arrived to kill you! We will destroy you!,’” the release mentioned.
Supplied the motivations of Chalikyan and Stepanyan, they pleaded guilty to a cost of committing a despise criminal offense, as effectively as a depend of conspiracy, the DOJ explained. Stepanyan was sentenced to five a long time in prison, when Chalikyan been given a 15-month sentence.
They will also pay back $21,200 in restitution for the assault, which harm a few folks, together with a person who dropped experience in their legs and collapses several moments as a end result of the injury.
“Also, during the attack, Stepanyan ripped out the restaurant’s laptop terminals and stole a victim’s Apple iphone,” totaling at minimum $20,000 in damage, the release reported.
“These defendants were pushed by despise, and their steps were being deplorable,” United States Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison claimed in the launch. “The physical accidents and emotional trauma to the victims are not able to be understated. We hope that the sentences handed down currently will aid vindicate individuals harms.”
“The victims in this circumstance have been brutally attacked by the defendants who trampled their civil rights and probable induced long lasting psychological soreness for almost nothing additional than the perception of exactly where they have been born,” included Kristi Johnson, the assistant director in demand of the FBI’s Los Angeles Industry Place of work, in the release. “The FBI is fully commited to investigating civil legal rights violations and holding accountable people who dedicate violent acts inspired by detest.”
