ATLANTA, Feb. 16 (UPI) — An Idaho man was charged with assaulting a minor after allegedly slapping a crying toddler on an airplane and calling the boy a racial epithet.
Joe Rickey Hundley of Hayden was seated next to Jessica Bennett, 33, and her 2-year-old son. As the Delta plane, inbound to Atlanta from Minneapolis, began to descend the altitude change hurt the young boy’s ears and he began to cry.
Fellow passengers told CNN as Bennett tried to calm her child, Hundley told her to “shut that [expletive] baby up,” — a reference to the child’s race — then slapped the boy with an open hand across the face, scratching him.
Hundley was charged with simple assault of a child younger than 16, which, if convicted, carries a maximum sentence of a year in jail.
Copyright 2013 United Press International, Inc. (UPI).
The mother in me, would react to this with a punch in that man’s face for slapping my child! But I guess you cannot fight hatred with hatred, so the man should get the maximum punishment called for. What a disgrace to the human race, for slapping a poor hurting baby!
I don’t believe this can be called a hate crime as race was not the motivation behind the attack. The man slapped the child because the child was crying, not because he was black. And while the man used a racial epithet, whether his intent was to be hateful or if he just used it in a descriptive manner will be for the courts to decide. If you read the hate crime statute, I think you will find that I am fairly correct, even though you may not like what I say or agree with it. But that’s why the statute was written. To remove the emotion, and bring a stable base to objectively assess the situation.
The guy shouted a racial expletive as he assualted a baby. Why is he not also being charged with assault as a hate crime?