To celebrate the flag’s heritage

In July 2015, a month after the murders at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, some racists in pickup trucks terrorized people at a child’s birthday party near Atlanta.

A Georgia judge has sentenced Kayla Norton, 25, and Jose “Joe” Torres, 26, to spend a combined 19 years in prison for their role in a group’s racist rampage at an 8-year-old’s birthday party — an assault that included shouting racial slurs, making armed threats and waving Confederate battle flags.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Norton told the family that endured the assault, weeping in the courtroom at Monday’s sentencing. “I am so sorry.”

It didn’t “happen” to them. People did it to them. Norton was one of the people who did it to them.

The assault occurred in July 2015, one month after a racist gunman killed nine worshippers at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C. Prosecutors say Norton, Torres and other members of a group that called itself “Respect the Flag” went on an alcohol-fueled racist spree in Douglas and Paulding counties, west of Atlanta.

With Confederate battle flags affixed to the beds of their pickup trucks, the group gathered for a ride that was purportedly meant to celebrate the flag’s heritage.

“However, Paulding County 911 began immediately receiving calls that members associated with this group were threatening African American citizens at various locations in Paulding County and hurling numerous racial slurs in the process as well,” according to the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office.

After threatening black motorists, the group headed to Douglasville, where they happened upon an outdoor birthday party that included a cookout and bouncy castle.

“Victims and witnesses from the party, who were predominantly African-American, testified to observing the group of trucks whose passengers were hurling a litany of racial slurs at them as they passed by,” prosecutors said.

Several members of the group — some of whom are now serving prison terms of their own — got out of their trucks and approached the partygoers, threatening to kill them all. According to their fellow defendants and witnesses, it was Norton who retrieved Torres’ shotgun — a tactical 12-gauge with a pistol grip — and loaded it before giving it to him.

Ugly.

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