Hate Crime Charged After 2 Hit-And-Runs, Racial Rant In 1 Day

WEST DES MOINES, IA — Police say an Iowa woman motivated by hate intentionally ran over a 14-year-old girl because she is “a Mexican,” hit a 12-year-old boy who is black, and hurled racial slurs and merchandise at convenience store customers and a clerk, all in the period of a couple of hours.

Nicole Marie Poole Franklin, 42, of Des Moines, was charged Friday with attempted murder after police in a Des Moines suburb said she deliberately jumped the curb in her Jeep Grand Cherokee on Dec. 9, hit 14-year-old Natalie Mirandak and “ran the girl over” as she walked near her middle school, and then fled the scene.

Clive Police Chief Michael Venema said at a news conference Friday that Poole Franklin had admitted she targeted the girl because she is a Latina and that she “made a series of derogatory statements about Latinos.”

The teen suffered multiple injuries, but is expected to recover.

Another attempted murder charge was added Monday after investigators used surveillance video to link Poole Franklin to an incident earlier in the day on Dec. 9. In that incident, she is accused of intentionally hitting a 12-year-old boy with her SUV as he walked on a sidewalk near a Des Moines apartment complex, the Des Moines Register reported.

About 15 minutes after the second of hit-and-run crashes, cell phone video from a customer at a West Des Moines convenience store showed Poole Franklin yelling racial slurs and throwing things at customers of color and at the clerk, investigators said.

West Des Moines police charged Poole Franklin with a hate crime, news station KCCI reported. The new charges in that incident come on top of charges of violation of individual rights, fifth-degree theft, public intoxication and possession of a controlled substance.

The store clerk, Abdul Jalali, told television news station WHO that Poole created a ruckus in the store for about 45 minutes before police arrived. She not only threw merchandise on the floor, but also tried to steal a bottle of liquor from his arms, Jalali said.

Poole Franklin admitted she had smoked methamphetamine within a few hours of hitting the 14-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy, the KCCI report said.

Both the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Council on American-Islamic Relations encouraged police to file hate crime charges in the hit-and-run crash involving the 14-year-old girl. CAIR said in a statement it was “an apparent racist attack in Iowa.”

The attempted murder charges reflect the seriousness of the hit-and-run crashes, Des Moines Police Sgt. Paul Parizek said.

“The hateful motivation seems so apparent to all of us,” Parizek said, according to the WHO report. “When we go to charge these crimes, I think law enforcement in the neighborhoods want to send a very strong message that if you commit a crime that's motivated like this, we are going to hit you with the most serious charge we can because we want the consequences to be severe, and that's the attempted murder here.”

Leaders of the two civil rights group urged Des Moines and Clive police to pursue hate crime charges in the hit-and-run crash involving the 14-year-old girl.

“We believe the hit-and-run was a hate crime,” Joe Henry, president of the Des Moines branch of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told the Des Moines Register. “That’s our position and we’re sure that that’s the family’s position as well.”

Failure to charge a hate crime would “give the green light to anybody to do this type of terrible thing,” Henry said.

The annual FBI crime report said personal attacks motivated by bias or prejudice reached a 16-year-high in 2018, and that violence targeting Latinos saw a significant upswing, to 485 in 2018, up from 430 in 2017.

Domingo Garcia, the national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told The New York Times there is a “direct correlation between the hate speech and the fear-mongering coming from President Trump and the right wing of the Republican Party with the increase in attacks against Latinos."