Alleged white supremacist sentenced for Santa Rosa hate crime

SANTA ROSA, Calif.

Salvatore Bordessa, 33, of Santa Rosa, was sentenced Tuesday in Sonoma County Superior Court for felony assault with a deadly weapon, misdemeanor assault with a deadly weapon and misdemeanor intimidation of a witness, prosecutors said.

He pleaded no contest to the charges in September in return for the seven-year sentence. According to prosecutors, Bordessa admitted to enhancements alleging the assaults were gang-related, a hate crime and caused great bodily harm.

Bordessa and his co-defendant Aaron Welch, 27, of Clearlake, assaulted two black male victims with knives near the McDonald's restaurant on Santa Rosa Avenue in south Santa Rosa around 2 a.m. on Aug, 26, 2012, Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch said.

According to the district attorney's office, Welch stabbed one of the men in the arm and leg, and during the assault Welch and Bordessa yelled racial slurs and "BBH," the initials of the Barbarian Brotherhood, a white supremacist criminal street gang.

Bordessa will serve 85 percent of his term before he is eligible for parole, Ravitch said.

Welch pleaded guilty in January to two felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon, and admitted to perpetrating a hate crime and street gang allegations, according to Ravitch's office. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

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