Inset: Douglas Wayne Cornett (Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office). Background: The gas station where Cornett shot two men because he believed they were illegal immigrants (Google Maps).
A Virginia man, aged 58, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for a hate-fueled shooting targeting two Latino men, driven by his frustration over illegal immigration and an obsession with cable news.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Roderick C. Young sentenced Douglas Wayne Cornett to life in federal prison. Cornett had admitted guilt to two federal hate crime charges, each involving attempted murder, and to firing a weapon during a federal crime of violence.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced the verdict on Friday, following Cornett’s plea agreement.
The incident occurred on the evening of February 28, 2024, when Cornett left his home in Spotsylvania with a 9 mm handgun fitted with a 17-round magazine. Around 9 p.m., he encountered a white box truck on Interstate 95, driven by “Victim 1.” Cornett honked and, after overtaking the truck, continued to tail it as the driver exited the highway and pulled into a gas station.
According to the criminal complaint, Victim 1 called a nearby friend for help, reporting that a van was following him. This friend, identified as “Victim 2,” also a Latino male, arrived at the gas station to confront Cornett about his actions. Cornett, positioned at a gas pump alongside the truck, inquired about how long Victim 1 had been in the country.
When Victim 1 responded that he had been in the U.S. for about a year and a half, Cornett drew a Sig Sauer P320 handgun and fired six shots from his vehicle, hitting both Victim 1 and Victim 2 four times in total.
Victim 1 was shot twice in the stomach and once in the arm while Victim 2 was shot once in the stomach. Cornett then drove home and informed his roommates that he had just shot two men.
Cornett was quickly identified as the shooter and arrested on Feb. 29, 2024. Investigators said he immediately admitted to shooting the men, telling federal authorities, “my intentions were clear in my brain, at the time,” per the criminal complaint.
“Cornett then described his anger at illegal immigration, telling the detective that he was ‘p—ed’ about undocumented migrants receiving welfare funds, phones, and health insurance, and that he had ‘driven around before with the same thought,’” court documents state. “Cornett later asked the detective whether he could be ‘charged for my thoughts,’ and went on to explain that he fantasized about flying an Apache helicopter gunship to the border and firing on undocumented migrants traveling into the United States in order ‘to deter’ other undocumented migrants from attempting to cross the border.”
In an interview with investigators, Cornett’s housemates said that he was “a heavy consumer of cable television news” who “was kind of obsessed by the news that he viewed regarding the entry of non-citizens into the United States at the southern border.”
In addition to the life sentences for each of the hate crimes, Young also sentenced Cornett to 10 years on the firearms charge, to be served consecutively.
