Indiana woman pleads guilty to hate crime after stabbing Asian-American college student

An Indiana woman has pleaded guilty to a federal hate crime after repeatedly stabbing a Chinese-American teenager on a city bus while shouting insults, court records show.

Billie Davis, 58, admitted to stabbing an 18-year-old Indiana University student in the head seven to 10 times last year. The teenager survived the pocket knife attack but suffered multiple injuries.

Davis told police she “freaked out” when she saw the woman and attacked her because she was Chinese, adding that she wanted to have “one less enemy,” the agreement states.

Trinh Le, community care director at the civil rights nonprofit Stop AAPI Hate, told USA TODAY the guilty plea did not ease the grief of Indiana's Asian American community, which has struggled since the attack.

“Students we supported after the attack at Indiana University told us they have lived in fear ever since,” Le said. “We know that racism against Asian American communities remains a widespread problem and is dangerously fueled by xenophobic, anti-immigrant comments from politicians and leaders. It is time to hold our leaders who encourage racist attackers accountable, too.”

The announcement in Indiana came less than two months before the election, just as some civil rights leaders are warning that the campaign could spark a spike in hate crimes. A study by the Leadership Conference Education Fund found that the number of reported hate crimes has increased during the past four presidential election cycles — and warns that there could be another dangerous spike this year.

Asian student stabbed multiple times on Indiana city bus

On January 11, 2023, Davis boarded a Bloomington Transit bus where the victim sat, according to the settlement filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.

After the victim, identified as “ZF,” pulled a cord to indicate she wanted to stop at the next exit, Davis pulled a folding knife from her right front pocket and flipped the blade open, the agreement states. When the student stood up to exit the bus, Davis turned toward her and repeatedly stabbed her in the head, court records say.

“ZF left the bus and screamed in pain from the stab wounds,” the agreement states. “The defendant folded the knife, put it back in her pocket and got back on the bus.”

According to court documents, the student suffered multiple wounds to her head, including a deep cut that required stitches and staples.

Another passenger followed Davis as she got off the bus. “The defendant called the passenger a 'slant-eyed lover' and said the woman who attacked her was going to blow up the bus because she was Asian,” the agreement states.

The bus's surveillance camera footage showed no interaction between Davis and the 18-year-old student before the sudden attack, which occurred at 4:43 p.m. when the bus came to a stop.

Court documents say Davis “demonstrated an awareness and positive acceptance of personal responsibility for the defendant's criminal conduct.”

Davis's lawyers argued that she was mentally ill and incompetent to stand trial. However, after she was given the right medication, her condition improved. In January of this year, the judge ruled that Davis was competent to stand trial and a trial would be scheduled.

An agreement states that Davis will be sentenced to a maximum of six years in prison at her hearing on December 3.

A public defender listed in court records for Davis did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.

Election year could encourage rise in hate crimes

California State University's Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism released a report earlier this year that found hate crimes in 25 American cities will increase by an average of 17% in 2023. According to the center, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Austin have all broken hate crime records since the early 1990s.

In one of the most recent hate incidents, Springfield, Ohio, faced a barrage of violent threats after leading Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, spread false claims that Haitian immigrants were eating pets.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors announced that a “self-described racist skinhead” was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for threatening his black neighbors in Maine. Charles Allen Barnes, 47, admitted to sending a Facebook voice message in which he said he was outside his neighbor's apartment and would kill anyone who came out while repeatedly using racial slurs.

A Boston-area man was sentenced to 18 months in prison earlier this month for an anti-Asian hate crime. Prosecutors said 78-year-old John Sullivan met a group of Asian Americans — including three children — outside a post office he had never seen before and yelled, “Go back to China.” Sullivan threatened to kill them and then drove his car into one of the adults, causing the man to fall face-first into a 10-foot-deep construction trench, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

A report warns that the country could see a rise in hate crimes just before the presidential election. The Leadership Conference Education Fund, a national civil rights group, said in a study last year that data going back to 2008 shows that hate crimes against ethnic groups increase around general elections.

“Given the mainstreaming of hate and the failure of social media platforms to adequately address disinformation, the current climate offers numerous opportunities for the trend of increasing hate to continue into the 2024 elections – unless action is taken,” the report said.

Contributors: N'dea Yancey-Bragg and Claire Thornton, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared in the Herald-Times: Indiana woman pleads guilty to hate crime in knife attack on Asian teenager