Ray Lazier Lengend, a Queens resident, has been sentenced to 18 years and 10 months in prison for hate crimes against a Hindu worship place and a Shiite mosque in New York, reports The Washington Examiner.
Lengend threw Molotov cocktails while driving by his targets that included a crack dealer’s house, the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center, his in-law’s house, and a home that served as a Hindu place of worship. The sentence for his crimes came almost seven years after he was arrested.
While, according to Daily News, Lengend confessed that “he targeted the mosque because it refused let him use the bathroom in the past,” Legend has also made Islamophobic comments. According to the Department of Justice, “the defendant stated that he had intended to ‘take out as many Arabs as possible.'”
“Lengend’s firebombing of houses of worship out of hatred of certain religions and races is the antithesis of what this country is all about,” said United States Attorney Richard P. Donoghue in a statement. “Such hate-filled crimes, through which he spread fear and endangered the lives of first responders and others, will never be tolerated by the Justice Department or the American people.”
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