Sending message to those targeting Asians, federal judge gives 9-year term to robber

In sentencing a Southwest Philly man to nine years in prison yesterday, a federal judge said that he was taking into account the need to deter others who would target and rob Asian business owners.

"That's a real concern," U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois said.

About 10:30 p.m. Dec. 3, 2008, Rickey Phillips, then 18, and two other men waited outside a restaurant on West Chester Pike in Upper Darby and followed the Asian female owner in her Lexus SUV to her Broomall home.

There, Phillips and Shawn Davis forced their way inside the home while Cheron Humphrey waited in their getaway car.

Davis pointed a handgun at the woman and demanded her attache case, as Phillips pushed her son, 15, to the floor. The two thugs then fled with the bag, which had about $1,500.

The robbery occurred at a time when there was a string of attacks against Asian business owners in Philadelphia and Delaware County.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Salvatore Astolfi told the judge that on the same day that Phillips and his co-defendants robbed the Delaware County restaurant owner, they also stopped an Asian woman in South Philly and violently robbed her. Phillips faces a hearing today in that case in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

Astolfi yesterday called two people to testify about how crimes like the Delaware County home invasion have affected people in the Asian community.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert K. Reed, deputy chief of the criminal division in the Philadelphia office, and Pearl Kim, a prosecutor in the Delaware County District Attorney's Office, had both been at a conference yesterday at Delaware County Community College on this topic.

"What distinguishes this crime and this group of crimes is the attack on Asians," Reed said. "This, in our view, is no different than if a white Klansman" attacked a black person. "These are racial attacks," Reed said.

Reed told the judge that criminals have targeted Asian business owners because they believe that they keep money in their homes and because they believe that the victims, possibly because of a language barrier, may not follow through in reporting the crimes.

He said that the pattern of attacks on Asian business owners had stopped for a while but then recently has started again.

Kim, a Delaware County resident, said that people in the Asian community are "extremely angry, they are offended, and frankly, they are terrorized by the defendant's actions."

Phillips, now 20, of the Eastwick section of Southwest Philly, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy, robbery and a firearms offense.

Defense attorney Nino Tinari noted that out of the string of robberies that federal prosecutors have taken on involving Asian business-owner victims, his client was just involved in "one of those." He contended that his client is innocent in the state case.

Nineteen family members and friends of Phillips showed up in court. Six testified before the judge, asking him to give Phillips a second chance, and said that the robbery was not in his character.

Phillips apologized to the victims, who were not in court, and said that he has learned his lesson.