A 25-year-old Missouri man was sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison Thursday for a hate crime after shooting a gay teen in May 2019.
Malachi Robinson shot the teenager, who is referred to as M.S. in court documents, eight times after meeting him at the Kansas City Public Library and luring him into the woods under the guise of looking for a place to engage in a sexual act, according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri.
On the day Robinson met M.S., who was 16 at the time, he messaged his girlfriend about M.S. and said, “He tryna set me up on sumn now, gonna unfriend him, might shoot this boy if he try some gay shit,” according to court documents.
In the days after the shooting, Robinson told a friend in a message that he had shot someone because “he was being gay af and following me like a mf,” according to court documents. Before his arrest on June 3, 2019, Robinson Googled phrases including “how to get away with murder in real life” and the victim’s name with the word “shot,” according to the documents.
M.S. was taken to a hospital in critical condition and remained hospitalized for two weeks. The department said he has suffered “long-term effects of the shooting,” including having to undergo multiple surgeries and physical therapy. He also still has several bullets inside of him, the attorney’s office said.
As part of a plea deal, Robinson pleaded guilty to one count of a hate crime involving an attempt to kill and was sentenced to 21 years and 10 months in prison without parole, according to the plea.
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