A man convicted of stabbing a Palestinian American near the University of Texas at Austin has been sentenced to one year in jail, as per recent court documents. Bert James Baker entered a guilty plea on Tuesday regarding the incident that occurred last year.
In February 2024, witnesses reported that Baker shouted racial slurs at a group of friends departing from a pro-Palestinian demonstration. Following this, he allegedly attacked the group, stabbing then-23-year-old Zacharia Doar in the chest and fracturing a rib in the process.
The Austin Police Department had recommended that the case be prosecuted as a hate crime to the Travis County District Attorney’s office. However, the grand jury determined that the evidence did not meet the necessary criteria for such a charge. Instead, Baker was indicted on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
The stabbing incident garnered national attention, coinciding with a troubling trend of assaults targeting Palestinian Americans.
