Man sentenced to 37 years on hate crime charges in deadly shooting at Muslim-owned tire shop

DALLAS (AP) — A man who opened fire at a Muslim-owned tire shop in Dallas in 2015, killing one person, was sentenced Wednesday to 37 years in prison on federal hate crime charges, authorities said.

Anthony Paz Torres, 39, pleaded guilty in September to five federal hate crime counts for killing one man and trying to kill four others during the shooting at Omar’s Wheels and Tires on Christmas Eve in 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release. He also pleaded guilty to one count of using a firearm to commit murder, federal prosecutors said.

Torres is currently serving a 35-year sentence after being convicted of murder by a Dallas County jury in 2018 in the slaying of Enrique Garcia Mendoza, a 25-year-old who was a passenger in a car getting serviced outside the tire shop.

Torres will get credit for time served in state custody, the Justice Department said.

Federal prosecutors said he admitted to making anti-Muslim comments at the tire shop a few days before the shooting and pledging to come back. When he returned, he asked customers if they were Muslim, and after being escorted to his vehicle by tire shop employees, fired in the direction of multiple employees and customers, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said Torres admitted to opening fire because he believed they were Muslim.