2 Armenian American men get prison time for attacking patrons at Turkish restaurant in Beverly Hills

LOS ANGELES — Two Armenian American males who attacked folks at a Turkish restaurant in Beverly Hills had been sentenced Monday to federal jail.

William Stepanyan, 23, of Glendale, was given a five-year sentence, and Harutyun Harry Chalikyan, 24, of the Tujunga neighborhood of Los Angeles was sentenced to fifteen months in jail. They had been additionally ordered to pay a complete of $21,200 in restitution.

They pleaded responsible final yr to conspiracy and committing a hate crime.

The boys, who're acquaintances, stormed into family-owned Turkish restaurant on Nov. 20, 2020, and attacked 5 folks, together with 4 who're of Turkish descent. They hurled wood chairs on the victims, overturned tables and smashed glassware, prosecutors stated.

The attackers shouted derogatory slurs about Turkish folks, yelled, “We got here to kill you,” and prompted $20,000 in harm, prosecutors stated.

The assault occurred amid native protests throughout a conflict between Armenia and its Turkish-backed neighboring nation, Azerbaijan, over the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh area.

“The victims on this case had been brutally attacked by the defendants, who trampled their civil rights and sure prompted lasting psychological ache for nothing greater than the notion of the place they had been born,” Kristi Johnson, assistant director in command of the FBI’s Los Angeles discipline workplace, stated in a press release.

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