A woman accused of stabbing an Asian American student at Indiana University Bloomington last year has pleaded guilty to a federal hate crimes charge, saying she “realized” the victim was Chinese, court documents show.
Billy Davis, 57, pleaded guilty last week to felony hate crimes charges after being indicted by a federal grand jury. Davis stabbed an 18-year-old student multiple times in the head on a city bus and later told police he did it to have one less enemy, according to the plea agreement.
Davis is scheduled to be sentenced in December and faces up to six years in prison, according to the plea agreement, and will be placed on probation after his release and required to pay restitution to the victim.
Davis’ lawyers, Leslie D. Wine and H. Samuel Ansell, told NBC News that the plea agreement, reached after “extensive negotiations,” allows the court to take into account both the crime and his “diminished capacity” due to mental illness.
“Davis is currently receiving appropriate treatment for his mental illness and has consistently expressed remorse for the pain he has caused his victim and her family,” his lawyers said in an email.
According to the plea agreement, the student, identified only as ZF, was sitting near the back of the bus when Davis boarded. When the student attempted to get off at her bus stop, Davis stabbed her in the head seven to 10 times with a knife. Davis eventually got off the bus and another passenger chased after her to confront her about the assault.
“The defendant told passengers that he was going to blow up the bus because the woman he attacked was Asian,” the plea agreement said, adding that Davis also yelled racial slurs at passengers.
After police arrived and arrested Davis, he allegedly said he “just cut himself off a minute ago and hit a girl” and used a racial slur to describe the student, according to the plea agreement.
According to a Bloomington Police Department press release, investigators obtained video footage from inside the bus after the incident, which did not show any prior interaction between Davis and the victim.
The victim was taken to a nearby hospital with multiple stab wounds measuring up to 1.75 centimeters to the head and a hematoma (a buildup of blood), and the injury required stitches, documents state.
The incident has shaken many Asian American students at the university, with several telling NBC News they feel under-supported.
Mara Yankee, then a senior media relations consultant at Indiana University, said last year that victims’ privacy requests “limit what Indiana University and other local officials can say publicly.”
“However, this does not weaken our university’s commitment to providing support to them and their families, and of course to our students, faculty and staff,” she said in an email.
Some noted that anti-Asian hatred was of particular concern given a history of racially-related violence against Asian students in the area. Former IU student Benjamin Smith, a vocal white supremacist, killed Yoon Won-jun, a 26-year-old doctoral student, outside a Korean United Methodist church in 1999. Smith, who had been pursued in a series of shootings targeting black, Jewish, and Asian people earlier that year, shot himself that same night.
Donna Mendel contributed.
