Dallas shooting suspect harbored delusions about Asian people, police say
Authorities in Dallas said on Tuesday the man suspected of opening fire in a hair salon in the city’s Koreatown and wounding three women of Asian descent harbored delusions about Asian people since having a car crash involving an Asian man two years ago.
Police identified the gunman as Jeremy Smith, 36, and said he has been charged with three counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Smith was booked early on Tuesday is being held in Dallas county jail.
The shooting is being investigated as a hate crime by the FBI along with the US attorney’s office for the northern district of Texas and the civil rights division of the US Department of Justice.
Dallas police earlier arrested Smith in connection with the shooting , and federal officials are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
Dallas police chief Eddie Garcia has said the shooting at Hair World Salon could be connected to two other shootings at businesses run by Asian Americans.
The shooting in Dallas occurred a few days before a white gunman killed 10 Black people on Saturday at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and a gunman authorities said was motivated by political hatred against Taiwan killed one person and wounded five on Sunday at a southern California church where mostly elderly Taiwanese parishioners had gathered.
Authorities have said a man dressed all in black opened fire at the Dallas salon, then drove off in a maroon minivan.
Garcia said investigators found that a similar vehicle was reported to be involved in two other recent shootings, including a drive-by on 2 April in the area where the salon is located. No one was injured in either of those shootings.
Garcia said the vehicle was also linked to a drive-by shooting on 10 May about 25 miles south-east of the shopping center where Wednesday’s shooting happened.
The three women who were shot at the salon were taken to a hospital with injuries that weren’t life-threatening.
Jane Bae, the daughter of one of the wounded women, told the Associated Press last week that her mother told her that the mystery shooter was calm.
“He was calm. He just walked up to it and then stood there – didn’t walk around – but stood there and shot like 20 shots and then just calmly went out,” said Bae, who wasn’t there but had spoken with her mother.
The salon is in the heart of Koreatown, which transformed in the 1980s from an industrial area to a thriving district with shopping, dining, markets, medical offices and salons.
Anti-Asian violence has risen sharply in recent years. Last year, six women of Asian descent were among the eight killed in a shooting at massage businesses in and near Atlanta, heightening anger and fear among Asian Americans.
And the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, announced hate crime charges relating to assaults by a suspect against seven Asian American women in New York City in February.