Hate crime charges added against Army vet accused of driving into pedestrians

Hate crime charges have been filed against a man accused of driving his car into a group of pedestrians last month based on evidence that he targeted the crowd because he thought they were Muslim or Indian.

Isaiah Peoples was arrested after the incident at a Sunnyvale, Calif., crosswalk left eight people injured, including a 13-year-old girl who remains on life support. The girl’s 9-year-old brother and father also were hurt in the crash. The family are Hindus of Indian descent, according to the Mercury News.

The eight victims ranged in age from 9 to 52.

Peoples, 34, was previously charged with eight counts of attempted murder and faces life in prison if convicted. Santa Clara prosecutors filed hate crime charges Thursday following an investigation by the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office, the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety and the FBI.

At the time of the incident, Sunnyvale police reported that Peoples accelerated his Toyota Corolla while approaching the crosswalk and rammed into a tree. Following the collision, a witness told police that Peoples stated something to the equivalent of, “Thank you, God.”

“Prejudice is not harmless,” Dist. Atty. Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “Someone’s child is in critical condition today because of someone’s ignorance and hatred. So today, we stand with her and her family, and all of our Muslim and Indian neighbors. We will be steadfast in our work to hold this person criminally responsible for the pain and destruction his abhorrent act has caused the eight people he struck, and our entire community.”

Peoples, an Army veteran born in San Francisco and living in Sunnyvale, was honorably discharged after deployments to Iraq from June 2005 to May 2006. His lawyer, Chuck Smith, has disputed the assertion that the crash was intentional.

“This act clearly was a product of some mental disorder or some mental defect that caused this to happen,” Smith told reporters after a court hearing in April. “There’s no explanation for this other than his service, the things he saw and what happened to him mentally while serving our country.”

Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental disorders “deserve not to simply be locked up, but rather treated and helped,” Smith said.

Pham Ngo, chief of Sunnyvale’s Department of Public Safety, said Peoples had picked up food and was on his way to deliver it to his Bible study group when the crash occurred.

Peoples has no previous criminal record and no history of contact with the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, except when he reported a lost item in February 2018, Ngo said. Police found “nothing of significance” while reviewing Peoples’ social media accounts.

Peoples’ mother, Leevell Peoples of Sacramento, said her son experienced “a bad episode” of PTSD in 2015. He was hospitalized afterward, and his mother said he told her has been taking medication regularly since then.

She thinks PTSD may be the reason for the crash.

A hearing in the case was set for 1:30 p.m. Thursday.

A GoFundMe account has been set up for the young girl who remains in a coma following the crash. So far, it’s raised more than $600,000.

Times staff writer Rong-Gong Lin II and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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