KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Paola, Kansas, man will serve more than two years in a federal prison in connection to a racially motivated hate crime in 2019.
Colton Donner, 27, pleaded guilty in February for threatening a Black man with a knife because of the man’s race.
Prosecutors said that Donner was driving through a Paola neighborhood in Sept. 2019 when he saw the man walking on a sidewalk. Donner stopped his car, grabbed a knife and approached the man, yelling racial slurs and telling the man that Paola was “a white town.”
As part of Thursday’s sentencing, Donner will serve 27 months in prison, after which he’ll be placed on 18 months of supervised release.
“Racially-motivated threats and violence have no place in our society today,” United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a release. “This sentence should send a strong message to perpetrators of violent hate-fueled acts that they will be held accountable for their crimes. Everyone deserves to feel safe and secure living in their communities, without being subject to racially-motivated crimes seeking to drive them from their homes or neighborhoods.”
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