Nicole Poole Franklin ran over a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl in Des Moines
Nicole Poole Franklin, 43, pled guilty in April to the Dec. 9, 2019, Des Moines attacks in which she deliberately drove into and wounded innocent children strolling along the street near their schools.
Prosecutors say Franklin ended up running over a black 12-year-old boy on a sidewalk around 3:45 p.m., damaging one of his legs. She later claimed that she believed the boy was of Middle Eastern ethnicity and was a member of the islamic extremist group Islamic State.
Prosecutors say Franklin ran over a 14-year-old Latina girl on a sidewalk roughly 20 minutes later. The girl sustained injuries that caused her being admitted to the hospital for two days. Franklin later confessed to authorities that she committed the crime because “she is a Mexican.”
During the interview, Poole Franklin made “a series of derogatory statements about Latinos,” according to police.
Poole Franklin allegedly used racist slurs and threw items at a clerk and customers at a convenience store an hour and a half after hitting Miranda, according to West Des Moines police. Video below.
“Nicole Poole Franklin attempted to kill two children because of the way they looked and where she believed they came from. This kind of egregious racial violence and hatred has absolutely no place in this country and will not be tolerated by the Justice Department,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
A federal judge sentenced her to 304 months on Thursday. Prosecutors said in a news release announcing the sentence that it will run concurrently with a 17½-year sentence Franklin received on related state charges of attempted murder on April 19.
