The driver who police say intentionally plowed into a crowd early Saturday outside a popular East Hollywood music venue was previously convicted of a hate crime in Orange County, a conviction subsequently overturned by an appeals court, according to prosecutors and court records.
Fernando Ramirez was 23 when, on June 15, 2019, he entered a Whole Foods Market in Laguna Beach and sucker-punched a 26-year-old Black employee who’d been on a lunch break, breaking the man’s nose and severely damaging his two front teeth, according to reports at the time of the incident.
When asked by an officer why he did it, Ramirez said in a conversation recorded on video that it was, in part, because the worker was Black, and that “he hated all Black people,” court records show.
Hate crime? He must be a White Hispanic!
