Michael Vivona has been accused of yelling, threatening, and spitting at US Olympic athlete Sakura Kokumai earlier this year. (Orange Police Station; Getty Images)
(((KTLA) — A man suspected of screaming intimidation and spitting on a U.S. Olympic karate athlete in a park in Southern California Earlier this year The Orange County law firm said it was charged with hate crimes on Friday.
Prosecutor Michael Orlando Vivona, 26, has already faced multiple hate crime charges in another case. news release..
Both incidents occurred in April at Grigalva Park in Orange.
According to a news release, Vivona was charged with civil rights infringement and misdemeanor in connection with the April 1 incident involving Japanese-American Olympic athletes.
The defendant is suspected of “aggressively yelling at the woman, threatening her, and spitting in her direction.”
Athlete Sakura Kokumai, 28, said she was in the park when strangers began shouting random things.
“He was basically yelling something like” Don’t talk behind me. ” Why are you looking at my car? “She told KTLA. “So I realized that it might be something a bit like that, I don’t know, so I’ll let it do.”
Saying scary, Kunimai took out his cell phone and started recording.
She said she wouldn’t know why she was being targeted until the man got into the car and started throwing racial slurs when he got into the car.
“I knew about the anti-Asia hatred that was happening. I see it almost every day in the news,” Kunii told KTLA in April. “But I didn’t expect that to happen in the park where I usually go to the train.”
According to DA Spitzer, the national backlash in the COVID-19 pandemic has increased anti-Asian hatred cases by 1,800% over the past year in Orange County.
In another incident on April 18, Vivona physically attacked a 78-year-old and 79-year-old Korean couple, hitting her husband’s face as he walked in the park every night, and his wife, according to DA. It is said that he hit his head. office. The power of striking defeated them respectively.
Vivona was arrested after bystanders intervened. He “later issued a statement to police who looked down on Asians,” the prosecutor said.
He was charged with two felony charges: elder abuse and a battery (specifically, a battery-a hate crime that causes injury), and two hate crime enhancements in that case.
Vivona is currently subject to a maximum sentence of nine years in state prison and one year in prison if convicted of all charges.
He has been released on bail at the Theoracy Facility for $ 65,000.
Spitzer encourages anyone who believes they have observed or is a victim of a hate crime to report to a local law enforcement agency.
“I don’t tolerate and punish all criminal haters,” he said in the release. “Orange County law enforcement agencies and prosecutors are properly trained to investigate and prosecute dislikes to the fullest extent of the law.”
A man charged with hate crimes after threatening training of US Olympic athletes in California State Park
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