HORRIFIC

‘Because He Was Black’: Colorado Trucker Admits to Killing Stranger in an Arby’s

Nolan Levi Strauss carried out the senseless 2019 stabbing while his victim was waiting to fill out a job application.

A long-haul trucker pleaded guilty Thursday to randomly stabbing a Black man who was sitting alone in an Arby’s in Ontario, Oregon. Nolan Levi Strauss, a 27-year-old from Colorado, was charged with a federal hate crime involving an attempt to kill for the December 2019 attack on 48-year-old Ronnell Tyrone Hughes. Hughes was waiting in a booth for the restaurant manager because he was applying for a job. Strauss walked in, came up behind Hughes, and stabbed him in the neck, unprovoked, according to prosecutors. A maintenance worker managed to subdue Strauss, and hold him for police. As they waited for the cops, the employee asked Strauss why he stabbed Hughes. “Because he was Black, and I don’t like Black people,” Strauss reportedly replied. Strauss will be sentenced on Sept. 9. He faces a maximum of life in prison.