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| Michael Enright |
(Scroll down for video) A man, who was arrested and charged with hate crime related charges, was jailed after pleading guilty to the attacks, according to court proceedings in New York.
The college student will serve 9 and one half years in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday to the charges that he attacked a taxi driver in New York, who immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh, during a diatribe against Muslims inside his taxi.
"I used a knife. I cut his throat," Michael Enright, 24, said when a Manhattan judge asked him to describe his crime.
Prosecutors claimed that Enright deserved a prison sentence of 18 years for his cold-blooded brutal attack.
"After insulting Islamic principles and mocking Ramadan restrictions, the defendant, unprovoked, reached through the partition of the taxi and slashed the victim’s neck," a prosecutor told the court.
Judge Richard Carruthers agreed that the charges, attempted murder and assault as hate crime, were serious. He said he was imposing a lesser sentence because Enright had no criminal record and because the victim was not seriously injured.
"This sentence is fair and appropriate," the judge said.
Authorities alleged that Enright asked driver Ahmed Sharif if he was Muslim, issued an Arabic greeting, and told him to consider this a checkpoint before slashing him.
Enright initially told police that Sharif tried to rob him and he defended himself, prosecutors said. The movie recording student later told police that he was a patriot, according to prosecutors.
A lawyer for Enright said he was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the attack.
"This was a heinous crime against an innocent New Yorker," District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said in a statement. "The victim, a native of Bangladesh, and father of four children, has been working and living in our diverse city for nearly three decades. There is no place for intolerance in the city of New York," he added.Mobile video not loading? Click here to view