A 26-year-old Brooklyn man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for striking a transgender woman in the head with a 2x4 piece of Plexiglass on a Bushwick street in October, 2014.
The defendant, Mashawn Sonds of Brownsville, was convicted of first-degree assault as a hate crime in December. His conviction was the first by the Brooklyn DA’s Hate Crimes Unit, founded in 2015 as part of the District Attorney’s Civil Rights Bureau.
The victim, 29-year-old Kimball Hartman, was in front of 1250 Bushwick Avenue near Weirfield Street at around 11:20 p.m. on October 12, 2014 when she was approached from behind by four men who made anti-gay statements and began to punch and kick her.
Hartman was walking with a gay male friend when she was attacked, according to the DA's office. Sonds and his companions approached them making homophobic comments like, "We don't want fags in our neighborhood."
Sonds then swung a piece of Plexiglas at Hartman, and proceeded to throw it at her head when she tried to get away, seriously injuring her. She was transported to Elmhurst Hospital in critical condition. Hartman ultimately sustained traumatic brain injury and underwent surgery.
At trial in December, Sonds's attorney maintained that his client was innocent, and was not present when Hartman was attacked. "It was an argument that got out of control and then expanded into the gay-type situation," he reportedly said of the attack itself, challenging the hate crime classification.
A month after the 2014 incident, Hartman told the Daily News that she had no plans to move out of the neighborhood where she was attacked. "I just want to live a normal life like everyone else has," she said. "I don't like people who are weak getting hurt by people who are stronger than them. I think it's bad."
