Confederate Flag: Georgia Couple Get 19 Years In Prison For Hate Crime, Threatening Black Family At Child's Birthday Party

A Georgia judge sentenced a couple to prison Monday for threatening a group of black people with weapons and the Confederate flag at a an 8-year-old child’s birthday party.

Jose Torres, 26, and Kayla Norton, 25, were convicted earlier this month of aggravated assault, terroristic threats and street-gang terrorism for a July 2015 confrontation in Douglas County near Atlanta. The duo apparently drove up to a birthday party in trucks, waving the American, military and Confederate flags.

Georgia Superior Court Judge William McClain sentenced Torres to 13 years in prison and Norton to six years in prison, according to Douglas County District Attorney Brian Fortner. They were also ousted from Douglas County and will face probation after their release.

“If you drive around town with a Confederate flag, yelling the N-word, you know how it’s going to be interpreted,” Judge William McClain said. “It’s inexplicable to me that you weren’t arrested by the police that day."

The couple wept in court as the judge laid down their fate of the incident that happened weeks after the Charleston Church Massacre, when the shooting killer, Dylann Roof, was pictured holding the Confederate flag and a handgun on his white supremacist website.

Norton loaded the shotgun and handed it to Torres who then pointed it at the adults and children. Norton along with 15 members of the “Respect, the Flag” group, was yelling the N-word as well as throwing objects.

“They repeatedly yelled death threats saying they were going to killing all the n----. They said, 'We'll blow the heads off all the little b------ and the little n----- can get one too,'” Assistant District Attorney David Emadi told Judge McClain.

The rest of the members were also indicted by a grand jury but faced lesser charges. Thomas Summers, 46 and Lacey Henderson, 38, accepted plea deals serving four and two years, respectively. Other defendants were charged with misdemeanors and ordered to perform community service, reported Fox 5 Atlanta.

No shots were fired that day, but Judge McClain said the group committed a hate crime, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“I don't think it's a coincidence that this incident happened one month after the Charleston shooting,” Judge McClain said to the couple. “I suppose Confederate flags can be interpreted different ways and different contexts, but if you're driving around waving Confederate flags and using the N-word everywhere you go, then there's only one way to interpret that,” he said.

Norton and Torres, who are not married, have three children together.