Report: Dallas shooter had ‘delusions’ before attack
DALLAS – The girlfriend of a man arrested in Dallas Tuesday in a shooting that wounded three women in a hair salon in the city’s Koreatown told police he had been admitted to health facilities because he was having delusions about Asian Americans, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Jeremy Theron Smith, 37, faces three charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to jail records.
The FBI said Tuesday that it has opened a federal hate crime investigation along with federal prosecutors in Texas and the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division. Police chief Eddie Garcia is expected to release additional information about the arrest later Tuesday.
Smith, who is Black, is jailed and no bond has been set. Jail records do not list an attorney for him.
According to affidavit obtained by The Dallas Morning News, Smith’s girlfriend told authorities when he is around an Asian American, “he begins having delusions that the Asian mob is after him or attempting to harm him.”
The newspaper reports she told detectives he had been having delusions about Asian Americans since being involved in a car crash two years ago with a man of Asian descent. She said he was fired for “verbally attacking” his boss, who was of Asian descent.
Garcia has said the shooting at Hair World Salon could be connected to two previous shootings at businesses run by Asian Americans.
Dallas FBI spokesperson Melinda Urbina said agents are working with city police “to thoroughly investigate this incident” but that she couldn’t provide further information because the probe is ongoing.
The shooting in Dallas occurred a few days before a white gunman killed 10 Black people Saturday at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and a gunman who authorities said was motivated by political hatred for Taiwan killed one person and wounded five Sunday at a California church where mostly Taiwanese parishioners had gathered.