A Texas man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for attacking an Asian family in 2020 because he thought they were Chinese and therefore responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic , according to federal court records. Jose Gomez III, 21, of Midland, Texas, was sentenced on Thursday after pleading guilty to three counts of committing a hate crime. When pleading guilty in March, Gomez admitted that he used a knife to slash Bawi Cung and his six- and two-year-old sons inside a Sam’s Club supermarket in Midland because he believed they were Chinese and spreading the coronavirus. Bawi Cung is from Myanmar. The March 2020 attack occurred as Asians faced verbal harassment and physical assaults across the United States after the virus began spreading nationwide. US woman arrested for making anti-Asian remarks, pepper spraying 4 people Gomez did not know the family when he followed them inside the store, federal authorities said in a statement. He followed them for several minutes because he perceived them to be a “threat” because they were “from the country who started spreading that disease around,” according to the statement. Gomez then bought a serrated steak knife and slashed the three before a Sam’s Club employee intervened, stopping the attack as Gomez yelled “Get out of America,” prosecutors said. Officials said Gomez admitted that he attacked the employee, who is white, because he “wanted to kill the six-year-old child and [the employee] was preventing him from doing so,” the Department of Justice said. “Hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans have spiked during the pandemic and must be confronted. All people deserve to feel safe and secure living in their communities, regardless of race, colour or national origin,” assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a press release. Violence against Asian-American people has increased across the country during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In December, the New York City Police Department reported incidents targeting Asians rose by 361 per cent over the previous year. Additional reporting by Tribune News Service