On February 24, 2022, the Washington Post published Texas man accused of attacking Asian family over racist coronavirus fears pleads guilty to hate-crime charges. A 21-year-old Texas man, Jose Gomez III, who attempted to kill an Asian man and his young child because he thought they were Chinese — and therefore, he said, responsible for the coronavirus pandemic — has pleaded guilty to federal hate-crime charges.  He slashed the 6-year-old boy’s face. “The blade entered millimeters from [the boy’s] right eye, split his right ear, and wrapped around to the back of his skull,” prosecutors said. Gomez then stabbed a White employee who had intervened to stop the attack.

Justice Department officials said that while Gomez was pinned down after being subdued, he yelled to the family, “Get out of America!”  Gomez later told local authorities that he had never seen the father before but had perceived him as a “threat” because he supposedly “came from the country who started spreading the disease around.” He admitted to trying to kill the father and the 6-year-old in an effort to “stop the threat.”  Gomez pleaded guilty to three counts of committing a hate crime and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a total of $750,000 in fines.