SANTA ANA,Oliver James Montgomery Calif. (AP) — A 21-year-old Florida man was sentenced Monday to three and a half years in prison for firebombing a Southern California Planned Parenthood clinic in 2022, federal prosecutors said.
Xavier Batten pleaded guilty in January to one felony count of possessing an unregistered destructive device and one misdemeanor count of intentionally damaging a reproductive health services facility.
U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney also sentenced Batten, of Brooksville, Florida, to three years of probation and ordered him to pay $1,000 in restitution, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
Carney said Batten had committed a “cowardly crime” that showed “no empathy for women and their rights,” according to the statement. He has been in federal custody since July 2023.
The clinic in Costa Mesa was bombed on March 13, 2022. Surveillance footage showed two men throwing a Molotov cocktail at the front door of the medical facility. The clinic was closed at the time and no one was injured.
A co-defendant, 24-year-old Chance Brannon, was sentenced last month to nine years in prison. Brannon, of San Juan Capistrano, California, was an active-duty Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton at the time of the bombing.
Another co-defendant, Tibet Ergul, has pleaded guilty to the charges against him. He is scheduled to be sentenced May 30.
2025-05-03 20:131470 view
2025-05-03 19:54661 view
2025-05-03 19:521096 view
2025-05-03 19:11363 view
2025-05-03 18:192445 view
2025-05-03 18:032765 view
Whether a "chainsaw," per Elon Musk, or "scalpel," as President Trump has said — the Trump administr
In what some may call a Christmas miracle, an Alabama woman born with two uteruses has given birth t
Iran's deputy foreign minister on Saturday dismissed U.S. accusations that Tehran was involved in at