Photo: Paul Mounce/Corbis via Getty
Two Native Hawaiian men have been sentenced to several years in federal prison on Thursday for beating their white neighbor nine years ago, an assault categorized as a hate crime.
U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright sentenced Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi, 32, and Levi Aki Jr., 33, to more than six years and more than four years in federal prison, respectively. Several U.S. Attorneys argued that the men’s assault of victim Chris Kunzelman was racially motivated, according to theDepartment of Justice’s statementissued Friday.
“The defendants in this case nearly killed a man because they believed he did not belong in their neighborhood because of the color of his skin,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in the statement.
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“The law protects everyone in this country from racially motivated violence, and these sentences send a strong message that such violence will not be tolerated.”
Per theWashington Post, Scottsdale, Ariz. resident Kunzelman said hebought a dilapidated bungalow"unseen" in Kahakuloa, a remote fishing village on the north side of the island, so his wife, who had been recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, could live out her dream of experiencing an “island paradise.”
According to the DOJ’s statement, Alo-Kaonohi and Aki trespassed onto Kunzelman’s newly purchased property while he was unpacking his belongings with his elderly uncle in February 2014. They threatened to “tie [him] up and drag [him]” and make him “go missing.”
Kunzelman had received similar threats from other residents of the village, as well: “This is a Hawaiian village. The only thing coming from the outside is the electricity,” and “You don’t even belong in Hawaii,” were some things he was told, according to the statement.
The report detailed that during the assault, Alo-Kaonohi dragged his index finger across Kunzelman’s jaw and told him, “Your skin is the wrong f—ing color” when Kunzelman said he owned the house. Aki then gave Alo-Kaonohi a roofing shovel, which he used to strike Kunzelman in the back of his head hard enough to create a gash.
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Shortly after, Alo-Kaonohi and Aki assaulted Kunzelman again, head-butting him and striking him in the face with the shovel, knocking him unconscious.
“No white man is ever going to live here,” one of them said during the attack.
When Kunzelman regained consciousness, he had two broken ribs and a concussion.
A security cameraon Kunzelman’s car recorded parts of the attack, theWashington Postreported. In the footage, Aki said “Haole,” which is a Hawaiian word for outsiders, typically used to refer to White people in a negative connotation.
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According to theWashington Post, Alo-Kaonohi and Aki were charged in November, nine months after the assault. At the sentence hearing, the government introduced evidence that Alo-Kaonohi assaulted another White man in a similar fashion at a bar in Wailuku, Maui, months after he and Aki attacked Kunzelman, the statement read.
The victim was attacked from behind and punched repeatedly in the head until he was knocked unconscious. He sustained a large gash on his head that took seven staples to close and suffered permanent brain damage, the statement reported.
“You were racist on that day,” Seabright said at Alo-Kaonohi’s sentencing hearing, according to local news accounts, per theWashington Post.
“There’s not going to really be any dispute that what he did was wrong,” Craig Jerome, a federal defender representing Alo-Kaonohi, told the jury in November, per theWashington Post. “But he didn’t do any of those things because of Mr. Kunzelman’s race. It was Mr. Kunzelman’s behavior. It was his perceived disrespect. It was his attitude.”
TheWashington Postreported Kunzel told police that he showed his neighbors copies of his property deed and easements, which granted him access to the private road.
Jonathan Okamura, a professor emeritus of ethnic studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told theWashington Postthat the attack was an example of “greater resentment against [White] haoles because of the historical oppression they inflicted upon Hawaiians.”
Alo-Kaonohi and Aki pled guilty to local charges in 2019 and were respectively sentenced to four years of probation and seven months of probation and time-served in prison, according to theWashington Post. The outlet reported that both men apologized to Kunzelman, but the plaintiff was not happy with the punishment.
“The only word I can come up with is corruption,” Kunzelman toldHawaii News Nowin 2019. “Both of them got probation and absolutely nothing. They got off scot-free.”
According to theWashington Post, Kunzelman left Hawaii after the assault, but they still own the bungalow in Kahakuloa.
source: people.com
