A 67-year-old Santa Monica man will spend the rest of his life in state prison for stabbing a Latino passenger aboard a Metro bus in 2023 after shouting racial slurs at him.

Gerald Pitts was sentenced Thursday, Aug. 6, to life plus seven years with the possibility of parole for the attempted murder of Santos Tejas Gonzalez, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced.

The attack happened the night of March 25, 2023. Gonzalez boarded the bus around 9 p.m. and tried to walk past Pitts to take a seat. Pitts immediately began shouting racial slurs, according to prosecutors.

When Gonzalez tried to exit at the next stop at Western Avenue and Exposition Boulevard to avoid a confrontation, Pitts stabbed him multiple times in the abdomen, arm, hand and face. As Gonzalez fell from the bus, Pitts kicked him repeatedly in the head while continuing to yell slurs.

Gonzalez survived despite life-threatening injuries.

Prosecutors said he is continuing to recover.

A jury convicted Pitts on June 16, 2026, of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. Jurors found the crime was willful, deliberate and premeditated, that Pitts personally used a knife, that he inflicted great bodily injury and that the offense was motivated by the victim's actual or perceived nationality, race or ethnicity.

District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman announced the sentence at an Aug. 6 event focused on the county's hate crime enforcement efforts. Hochman said Pitts attacked a complete stranger because of his race, stabbed him repeatedly and continued the assault even after the victim fell from the bus.

Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey Illions of the Organized Crime Division prosecuted the case. The LAPD conducted the investigation. The DA's office also released Metro surveillance video of the attack on the day of sentencing.

L.A. County recorded 1,355 hate crime victims in 2024, an average of nearly four per day, according to the Los Angeles Times. That total included 143 anti-Latino crimes. The 2024 figure was a 1% decrease from the record high set in 2023.

The Pitts case is one of several hate crime prosecutions the DA's office is pursuing countywide. A separate Santa Monica case involving Job Uriah Taylor, 28, accused of a racially motivated attack near the Downtown Santa Monica Expo Line station in March 2023, has a pretrial hearing set for Tuesday, Aug. 11, at the Airport Courthouse, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press. Taylor faces a potential life sentence if convicted.

Residents who witness or experience a hate crime can report it to the Santa Monica Police Department or the LA County DA's Justice System Integrity Division.