An Indiana woman has pleaded guilty to a federal hate crime in the death of a Chinese American teenager who repeatedly stabbed him on a city bus while yelling expletives, court records show.
Billy Davis, 58, admitted to stabbing an 18-year-old female Indiana University student in the head seven to 10 times last year, after she escaped the pocket knife attack but suffered multiple wounds.
Davis told police he saw the woman, called her “kat” and attacked her because she was Chinese, adding that he “just wanted one less enemy,” according to the plea agreement.
Trinh Le, community care director for the nonprofit civil rights group Stop Asian American Hate, told USA Today that the guilty plea does not erase the grief Indiana’s Asian American community has been feeling since the attack.
“Students we supported (at Indiana University) after the attack told us they have been living in fear ever since,” Lee said. “We know that racism against the Asian American community remains a pervasive issue and is dangerously fueled by xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric from politicians and leaders. It is time to hold leaders who embolden racist attackers accountable as well.”
Indiana’s announcement comes less than two months before the election, but some civil rights leaders have warned that the race could trigger a spike in hate crimes. Research by the Leadership Conference Educational Fund has found that reported hate crimes have risen during the past four presidential election cycles, and they warn that a dangerous increase is on the way this year.
Asian student stabbed multiple times on Indiana city bus
According to a plea agreement filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, on Jan. 11, 2023, Davis boarded a Bloomington Transit bus in which the victim was traveling.
According to the agreement, after the victim, who identified herself as “ZF,” pulled the leash to indicate she wanted to stop at the next exit, Davis removed a folding knife from her right front pocket and opened the blade. When the student stood up to exit the bus, Davis turned to face her and stabbed her multiple times in the head, according to court documents.
“ZF exited the bus screaming in pain from the stab wounds,” the plea agreement states. “The defendant folded the knife, put it back in his pocket, and sat back on the bus.”
The student suffered several wounds to his head, including a deep cut that required stitches and staples, according to court documents.
When Davis got off the bus, another passenger followed her, and “the defendant … stated he was going to blow up the bus because the woman he attacked was Asian,” the plea agreement states.
Security camera footage from the bus did not show any interaction between Davis and the 18-year-old student prior to the sudden attack when the bus came to a halt at 4:43 p.m.
Court documents say Davis “has demonstrated an awareness and willingness to accept personal responsibility for the defendant’s criminal conduct.”
Davis’ defense team argued that she was mentally ill and incompetent to stand trial, but once she was placed on appropriate medication, her condition improved. In January of this year, the judge in the case ruled that Davis was competent and the trial would go ahead as scheduled.
Davis is due to appear in court on Dec. 3 and faces up to six years in prison, according to the plea agreement.
The public defender listed as representing Davis in court records did not immediately respond to USA Today’s request for comment.
Election years can lead to an increase in hate crimes
The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University released a report earlier this year stating that hate crimes will increase by an average of 17% in 25 U.S. cities in 2023. Four cities — Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Austin — have all broken records for hate crimes dating back to the early 1990s, according to the center.
In one of the most recent hate incidents, Republican leaders in Springfield, Ohio, including former President Donald Trump, have faced a series of violent threats after spreading false claims that Haitian immigrants eat pets.
A “self-described racist skinhead” in Maine was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for threatening a black neighbor, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday. Charles Allen Burns, 47, admitted to standing outside the neighbor’s apartment, yelling racist slurs, and sending Facebook audio messages threatening to kill anyone who came out.
A Boston-area man was sentenced to 18 months in prison earlier this month for a hate crime against Asians. Prosecutors said that John Sullivan, 78, was outside a post office when he encountered a group of Asian Americans he had never met before, including three children, and yelled at them to “go back to China.” He threatened to kill them and then drove his car into one of the adults, eventually causing the man to fall face-first into a 10-foot-deep construction ditch, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
With just weeks to go until the presidential election, a report has warned that hate incidents across the country could increase. The Leadership Conference Educational Fund, a national civil rights group, said in a study last year that data going back to 2008 showed that hate crimes against racial groups increase around the time of general elections.
“Given the mainstreaming of hate and the inability of social media platforms to adequately address disinformation, the current environment is rife with the potential for this trend of growing hatred to continue through the 2024 elections unless action is taken,” the report said.
Contributors: N’dea Yancey-Bragg and Claire Thornton, USA TODAY
