NEW YORK – A man accused of leading an election night rampage that put one victim in a coma told a judge Monday he organized the attacks because he was drunk and angry about Barack Obama’s victory.
Ralph Nicoletti, 18, made the statements in federal court in Brooklyn as he pleaded guilty to hate-crime assault. He faces 12 years in prison if the judge accepts the plea agreement at sentencing on March 23.
Nicoletti told U.S. District Judge Carol B. Amonthat that he and three other men decided that if Obama won, they would “go after black people” they assumed had voted for the Illinois Democrat.
“I was drunk. I was angry,” Nicoletti said when asked by the judge why he did it.
Prosecutors had accused Nicoletti of driving the group to a black neighborhood, where they stopped a Liberian immigrant and beat him with a metal pipe and police baton.
They later pushed a black man to the ground, demanded that a Hispanic man tell them how he voted, and yelled profanities about Obama as they drove past blacks at a hair salon, court papers said.
The defendants also used their car to run over a white man, Ronald Forte, who they mistakenly believed was black, the papers said. The victim was in a coma for several days but survived.