On this date in 2007, in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles, California, Porfirio Avila, 31, a member of the Avenues gang, a Latino street gang in Los Angeles, was sentenced to life without parole for his role in the race-based hate crime murders of two African-American men, Christopher Bowser, who was shot while waiting at a bus stop in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles on December 11, 2000, and Kenneth Kurry Wilson, who was shot while looking for a parking place in Highland Park on April 18, 1999. Sentenced also were Gilbert Saldana, 27 (who murdered Mr. Wilson), Alejandro Martinez, 28, and Fernando Cazares, 25. In addition to his federal prison sentence, Avila had already been given a life sentence in a state court for killing Mr. Bowser and Mr. Wilson. A fifth defendant, Merced Cambero, Jr., who was 27 years old on this date in 2006, is alleged to have been a part of the murders, and is a wanted fugitive. His street name is “Shadow.”

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on this date in 2009, someone placed a noose on a supervisor's desk at the Governor's Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP), and the act was treated as a hate crime.

On this date in 2009 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a 32-year-old lesbian of color, Kristen Boyne, was punched and kicked in the head, face, and stomach until she lost consciousness by two men who used lesbian slurs immediately before the attack which took place in the Uptown section of the city at Lake Street and Dupont Avenue as Ms. Boyne was walking to the Rainbow Foods grocery store. Robbery was clearly not a motive as Ms. Boyne said she offered her two attackers her wallet and her mobile phone but they did not want either of them. She was hospitalized at the Hennepin County Medical Center with a severe concussion. Call the Minneapolis police if you have information about this crime at (612) 692-TIPS (8477), or contact Minneapolis police Sergeant Bruce Kohn at (612) 673-2941.