Eric Celaya, 30, from Phoenix, was given eight months in prison and 36 months of supervised release by a federal judge for buying two guns under his own name and giving them to the person who killed two Jewish men in Los Angeles.
Authorities say Celaya had never been in trouble with the law before and didn’t know what Jamie Tran, the man he bought the guns for, wanted or believed.
In 2023, Tran couldn’t buy guns because of mental health holds that had been put on him before. It was January of that year, and he went to Phoenix to ask Celaya to buy him two guns. The authorities say he paid him $1,500 in cash.
Tran bought the guns with the goal of “killing Jews,” according to the police.
Tran used the internet in the morning of February 15, 2023, to look up places that had a “kosher market.” He drove to an area near a synagogue and shot a Jewish man who was wearing a yarmulke, which is a small cap without a brim that Jews wear. Tran then drove away from the scene of the crime.
The next morning, Tran went back to the same spot and shot a second person, this time a man wearing a yarmulke. He then ran away again.
Both victims lived through the attacks, and Tran was arrested on February 17, 2023, after someone saw him firing a gun behind a motel. When Tran was caught, he told the police that he was just “practicing.”
The crimes were called hate crimes, and Tran was given a 35-year prison sentence in September. As per the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he pleaded guilty in June to two counts of hate crimes with intent to kill and two counts of firing a gun during a violent crime.
After Tran was sentenced, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada for the Central District of California said, “Targeting people for death based only on their religious and racial background brings back memories of the darkest chapters in human history.” “Such hate-fueled violence has no place in America.”
In an FBI affidavit, text messages, emails, and other reports are used to show that Tran had a “history of antisemitic and threatening conduct.”
After saying racist things about other students, Tran quit graduate school in 2018. He became a threat in 2022 when he emailed old classmates and said, “Someone is going to kill you, Jew” and “I want you dead, Jew.”
The name Tran for himself on social media was “k1llalljews,” and he called himself a “ticking time bomb.” He also sent hateful emails to Jews saying they were behind the “COVID agenda.”
