Let’s make this focus-on-the-Hmong day at RRW. See previous post.
Note that in this criminal case, the court could not find an impartial interpreter. From ABC 8 Tulsa:
Two men appeared before a Tulsa courtroom for their reported roles in a shooting at a Hmong New Year’s festival.
Boonmlee Lee and Meng Lee made their appearance before the judge for their scheduled preliminary hearings. Both are accused of opening fire at the festival in east Tulsa last fall.
Court records indicate that both men have pleaded not guilty to the counts of shooting with intent to kill and assault and battery with a deadly weapon.
According to a report from the Associated Press, an Oklahoma judge delayed the preliminary hearings last month because attorneys were having problems finding a local interpreter who didn’t know the victims or defendants.
The Lees and the five people hurt in the October shooting are all ethnic Hmong, who hail from Asian countries including Laos, China, Vietnam and Thailand. Thousands of Hmong live in Tulsa, many arriving in recent years in search of work. [But wait! We are constantly told that there aren’t enough immigrant laborers in America!—Hey Grover! Hmong over here looking for work—ed]
We know that tens of thousands of Hmong refugees were resettled in Minnesota, Wisconsin and California, but did you know that criminal gangs were forming in Minnesota in the mid-1980’s? See this 2003 report on Hmong gangs in America.