Man charged with aggravated assault in in Dallas hair salon shooting
A suspect has been arrested in connection with a shooting that wounded three women in a hair salon in the city's Koreatown, police said early Tuesday. Police identified the suspect on Tuesday afternoon as 36-year-old Jeremy Smith.
Smith was charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to the Dallas Police Department. The FBI has opened a federal hate crime investigation into the incident, according to The Associated Press.
When he was still being sought, police described the suspect as a 5'7" to 5'10" Black man with a thin build and curly medium-length hair, as well as a connecting beard.
Garcia said last week that last Wednesday's shooting at Hair World Salon could be connected to two other shootings at businesses run by Asian Americans.
Authorities have said a man dressed all in black opened fire at the 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 an April 2 drive-by 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 May 10 about 25 miles southeast 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 man, who she didn't recognize, calmly walked in, opened fire and then left.
"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 is in a part of the city that was transformed in the 1980s from an industrial area to a thriving district with shopping, dining, markets, medical offices and salons.
"The possibility that we are dealing with a violent gunman who is motivated by hate is chilling and deeply disturbing," Mayor Eric Johnson said in a statement Friday evening. "And I want our city's Asian American community — which has appallingly faced increasing vitriol in recent years — to know that the City of Dallas and the people of Dallas stand with them."
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.
