CHICAGO (AFP) — A white man convicted of killing a Hmong immigrant while hunting squirrels was sentenced to 71 years in jail in a racially charged case, court records showed on Wednesday.
James Nichols was found guilty of shooting and stabbing to death Cha Vang in a public hunting ground in rural Wisconsin on January 5 and then trying to hide his body.
The case heightened tensions between white hunters and the ethnic Hmong, most of whom began emigrating to the United States from Laos and Thailand after the Vietnam war.
The trial follows a 2004 case in which a Hmong deer hunter shot and killed six white hunters in a dispute over trespassing on private hunting land.
The shooter, now serving life in prison, said he fired in self-defense because the white hunters yelled racial epithets and threatened him.
Nichols, 29, admits that he killed Vang, 30, but said he did so in self-defense after Vang shot him twice.
Nichols and Vang tangled when the two were hunting separately on public property. Nichols said he got upset when he had cornered a squirrel in a tree and saw Vang watching, claiming the Hmong immigrant was "molesting" his hunt, according to the criminal complaint.
Nichols said after Vang shot, he ran toward the immigrant, fired his shotgun then stabbed Vang with a knife.
Vang's face, chest and arm were riddled with shotgun pellets. The victim had five stab wounds to his neck, including cuts to both jugular veins. A stick had been shoved into Vang's mouth, piercing his tongue and breaking some of his teeth.
The body was abandoned in the woods, and identified later because Vang had his wallet with his identification in his pocket. Vang's .22-caliber rifle was found hidden in a hollow log.
Nichols told investigators that Hmong are "bad," they "kill everything" and "go for anything that moves." His lawyer told the jury that Nichols had nothing against the Hmong, just their hunting practices.
The state of Wisconsin has a population of some 70,000 Hmong immigrants, the third largest after California and Minnesota.
Vang, his wife and five children, ages four to 11, moved to the United States from Thailand in 2004.
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