A 40-year-old Seattle man named Andre Karlow has been sentenced to seven years in prison after a jury found him guilty of an anti-trans hate crime.

Police arrested Karlow (who already had nine prior felony convictions) in March 2025 for being part of a group of men that violently attacked Andie Holcepl, a trans woman, after first verbally harassing her – calling her a drag queen, telling her to take off her makeup, and calling her an antigay slur, the Seattle Times reported.

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Prosecutor Yessenia Manzo described the attack in court, alleging Karlow and the rest of the group “took [Holcepl] to the ground twice, punched her, kicked her, chased her down, left her with a swollen black eye, with fractured teeth and with a brain bleed, all because Andie is trans.”

The defense attorney, Michael Greene, argued it was not a hate crime. He claimed, “Nobody should have to deal with feeling that way, but you need to consider how someone who feels that way might misperceive events, how they might see bias where there wasn’t any. Andre Karlow is innocent, he did not commit a hate crime, he did not cause substantial bodily injuries.”

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Holcepl testified in court that she will “carry this the rest of my life” and that she is filled with “frustration and anger and broken-heartedness and disappointment.”

The trial also was delayed after Manzo introduced new evidence, quoting a recorded call Karlow made from jail, in which he declared, “If I didn’t hate trans people before, I do now, absolutely. I think that Trump should kill them all. Get them out of here. They’re weird.” The trial paused as the judge considered whether the jury could hear that evidence. He ultimately ruled it inadmissible, saying it showed only Karlow’s state of mind during the phone call, not during the crime.

KOMO News also reported that the judge threatened to hold Karlow in contempt after he refused to sign the judgment papers. He ultimately backed down and signed.

Judge Jim Rogers reportedly called the crime “reprehensible” during Karlow’s Friday sentencing hearing, adding that “it’s really beyond imagination.” He gave him concurrent sentences of seven years for assault and five years for the hate crime.

The crime was the second anti-trans assault with which Karlow has been charged. In September 2024, police arrested him for punching a trans fare inspector for the city’s Sound Transit service after first calling them an antigay slur.

Also on Friday, King County Superior Court Judge Andrea Robertson sentenced Karlow to 180 days in jail for that assault, which will be served prior to his seven-year sentence, according to the Times. A jury was unable to reach a verdict on classifying the first assault as a hate crime.

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