BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts man has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for threatening to kill a group of Asian Americans and repeatedly hitting one of them with his car.

John Sullivan, a white man in his late 70s, was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty in April to a federal hate crime, specifically charges of willfully causing bodily injury to a victim through the use of a dangerous weapon because of his actual and perceived race and national origin.

“Racially motivated and hate-fueled attacks have no place in our society,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “This defendant targeted this man solely because he was Asian American. This behavior will not be tolerated, and the Justice Department is steadfast in its commitment to vigorously prosecute those who commit unlawful acts of hate.”

In December 2022, Sullivan encountered a group of Asian Americans including children outside a Quincy post office. He yelled “go back to China” and threatened to kill them before repeatedly hitting one of them, a Vietnamese man, with his car. Prosecutors said the victim fell into a construction ditch and was injured.

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There had been a dramatic spike in verbal, physical and online attacks against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which was thought to have originated in China. Stop AAPI Hate, a reporting center, documented over 9,000 incidents — mostly self-reported by victims — between March 2020 and June 2021. Last year, the FBI reported a 7% increase in overall hate crimes in 2022, even as the agency’s data showed anti-Asian incidents in 2022 were down 33% from 2021.

Special Agent in Charge Jodi Cohen, of the FBI Boston Field Office, said all Massachusetts communities “deserve respect and the ability to live, work, and raise their children without fear.”

“A run of the mill trip to the post office turned into a nightmare for this Vietnamese man when John Sullivan decided to target him because of the color of his skin and the country of his ancestors,” Cohen said in a statement. “There is no way to undo the damage Mr. Sullivan caused with his hateful, repulsive and violent behavior, but hopefully today’s sentence provides some measure of comfort.”

Sullivan’s defense attorney, in a sentencing memorandum, argued that his client should not be judged solely on this one act. They had requested six months of home confinement and three years of supervised release.

“There are bad people who do bad things and good people that do a bad thing,” the attorney wrote in the sentencing memorandum. “Jack Sullivan is a good person who made a bad decision on the date of this offense. Jack will suffer the consequences of his poor decision. His background suggests his behavior in this case was an aberration and not the norm for him.”

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