A white man who fatally stabbed a Black father of two outside a Kansas City, Missouri, gas station will be charged with federal hate crimes, even as local prosecutors struggle with charging him for the man’s slaying.
Witnesses describe the attack as being marked by racially bigoted slurs specifically targeting the Black victim.
A federal grand jury indicted Sean Walter Tonkin, 36, on Dec. 20 for committing a “racially-motivated hate crime” that resulted in the death of Jon Rone Jr., 41.
Additionally, Jackson County prosecutors have charged Tonkin with misdemeanor disturbing the peace and possession of methamphetamine, and the Florida resident was being held in a local jail.
According to the Department of Justice, Tonkin was armed with a knife and knuckles when he walked up to Rone during the Fourth of July holiday around 2:30 p.m. It is alleged that Tonkin started to spew “racial epithets and threats” at the Black man before stabbing him twice, once in his chest and then in his abdomen during the deadly encounter.
Rone later succumbed to his injuries. Law enforcement successfully located and apprehended the assailant a few miles from the crime scene. The Justice Department asserts that Tonkin targeted the man due to his race, specifically because he was Black.
A few of Rone’s friends and family members said they believed Tonkin was looking for a fight on that afternoon.
Witnesses to the stabbing told police that the white man had used the slurs to them and continued to say it after he was told to stop before directing them to Rone. They also say Tonkin threw the first punch, which led to the two fighting.
Surveillance video showed Rone following Tonkin to the side of the business with a club in his hand until he was out of the camera’s view. Minutes later, Rone stumbled back into the store and said, “he stabbed me,” before falling to the ground.
Rone’s girlfriend, Misty Beck, told The Kansas City Star that she and Rone would frequent the gas station to play casino games. Beck said she tried to convince Rone to walk away after Tonkin, who was staying at a local motel, started spewing the racial slurs, but he told her calmly that he would handle it.
A representative from the local prosecution’s office, Mike Mansur, said in July 2023 that the prosecution is being very careful as those working on the case “examine who started the incident, what weapons were used by the people involved and Missouri’s law on self-defense.”
The goal is to present charges they can prove.
“We vigorously and categorically condemn that language and its usage in any circumstance,” Mansur said, Law and Crime reported. “We have filed the available Missouri charges that address those racist comments which were made to Jon Rone in a face-to-face manner.”
Rone’s family wants Tonkin to be charged with murder. His sister told the Kansas City Star that a witness told her that before the incident, Tonkin asked that witness, “Do you wanna see a white man f*ck up a n**ger?”
“So how can (Tonkin) not be the aggressor?” she asked.
Reportedly, in Tonkin’s residence are images featuring him in camouflage attire adorned with a camouflage mask concealing his face.
Additionally, there are photographs depicting a knife wrapped in the American flag logo, expressions of hate speech targeting Black people, visuals of guides titled “Explosive Limits of Gases & Vapors,” and a tattoo displaying three triangles stacked on top of each other, purportedly symbolizing Valknut — a symbol associated with reincarnation.
