Inset: Douglas Wayne Cornett (Spotsylvania Sheriff's Office). Background: The gas station where Cornett shot two men because he believed they were illegal immigrants (Google Maps).
A 58-year-old man in Virginia who was "obsessed" with cable news will spend the remainder of his days behind bars for following and shooting two Latino men because he was "p—ed" about illegal immigration.
U.S. District Judge Roderick C. Young on Thursday ordered Douglas Wayne Cornett to serve a sentence of life in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to two federal hate crime charges, each involving an attempt to kill, and to discharging a firearm during a federal crime of violence.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced the sentence Friday.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Cornett on the evening of Feb. 28, 2024, left his home in Spotsylvania armed with a 9 mm handgun equipped with a 17-shot magazine. At about 9 p.m., Cornett encountered a white box truck on Interstate 95 being driven by "Victim 1" and began honking. The victim allowed Cornett to pass, but Cornett remained behind the victim's vehicle, following it as the truck pulled off the highway and into a gas station.
According to the criminal complaint, the victim called a friend who was nearby and said he was being followed by a van. The friend, also an adult Latino male referred to in the document as "Victim 2," went to the same gas station and asked Cornett why he was following the box truck. Cornett, who had stopped at the gas pump alongside the truck, responded by asking "how long Victim 1 had been in the United States."
Victim 1 said he had been in the country about "a year and a half" and Cornett then "pulled out the Sig Sauer P320 handgun and opened fire from his vehicle, discharging six rounds, four of which struck Victim 1 and Victim 2."
Victim 1 was shot twice in the stomach and once in the arm while Victim 2 was shot once in the stomach. Cornett then drove home and informed his roommates that he had just shot two men.
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Cornett was quickly identified as the shooter and arrested on Feb. 29, 2024. Investigators said he immediately admitted to shooting the men, telling federal authorities, "my intentions were clear in my brain, at the time," per the criminal complaint.
"Cornett then described his anger at illegal immigration, telling the detective that he was 'p—ed' about undocumented migrants receiving welfare funds, phones, and health insurance, and that he had 'driven around before with the same thought,'" court documents state. "Cornett later asked the detective whether he could be 'charged for my thoughts,' and went on to explain that he fantasized about flying an Apache helicopter gunship to the border and firing on undocumented migrants traveling into the United States in order 'to deter' other undocumented migrants from attempting to cross the border."
In an interview with investigators, Cornett's housemates said that he was "a heavy consumer of cable television news" who "was kind of obsessed by the news that he viewed regarding the entry of non-citizens into the United States at the southern border."
In addition to the life sentences for each of the hate crimes, Young also sentenced Cornett to 10 years on the firearms charge, to be served consecutively.