Man given 1-year sentence in death of Jewish protester at dueling California rallies

A man was sentenced Tuesday to one year in jail and two years of probation after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter and battery in the death of a Jewish counter-protester at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in California in November 2023.

The Ventura County district attorney’s office said that Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji, 53, escalated a verbal confrontation with 69-year-old Paul Kessler and struck him with a megaphone at the protest in Thousand Oaks, a suburb northwest of Los Angeles.

After he was struck, Kessler fell backward and struck his head on the sidewalk. He died the next day in a hospital.

The DA’s office said Tuesday that it objected to the court’s decision to impose a one-year sentence and probation.

“Mr. Kessler lost his life in a violent attack that took him from his family and his wife of 43 years,” said District Attorney Erik Nasarenko. “Given the circumstances of this case and the death that resulted, we believe a state prison commitment was the appropriate and just sentence.”

The Ventura County district attorney’s office said Kessler’s widow submitted a victim impact statement to the court.

“There are no words to describe the pain of losing a husband in such a sudden and violent way,” she wrote. “The grief is relentless. The silence in our house, the absence of his voice, his companionship, his love and the future we had planned together are losses I carry with me every day.”

Kessler was among a group of pro-Israel demonstrators who showed up at the event that was advertised as a peaceful gathering, officials said.

About 75 people in total were there and patrols in the area reported seeing no indication of violence 15 minutes before the altercation happened.

Alnaji, a former professor of computer science at Moorpark College, stayed at the scene and told deputies he had called 911.

While the Ventura County Sheriff told reporters in November 2023 that investigators had not ruled out the possibility of the incident being a hate crime, Alnaji was not charged with and did not plead guilty to a hate crime.

He admitted to a special allegation that he personally inflicted great bodily injury, and to aggravating factors that he used a weapon and that the victim was particularly vulnerable, according to the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office.

Following the incident, Fox News reported that Alnaji shared a video on his since-deleted Instagram account that featured a pro-Palestinian activist who compared the Hamas terror group to civil rights leaders Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.