Prosecutors charged a Seattle man with a felony hate crime after he allegedly threatened multiple Asian-Americans on two separate occasions earlier this month.
Christopher Allen Hamner, a 51-year-old well-known Black Lives Matter activist, was arrested Thursday on accusations of committing malicious harassment in the Seattle area, according to a
Seattle Police Department (SPD) blotter.
Hamner had his bail set at $75,000 and is being held at the King County Correctional Facility for the felony hate crime charge plus three additional counts of malicious harassment, jail records show.
According to
court documents filed to the King County Superior Court, Hamner
used offensive language and threw unknown objects towards at least five Asians on two separate occasions. All the incidents happened while on the road, or near a vehicle.
On March 16, he allegedly harassed Pamela Cole, an Asian-American woman,
and her two children aged 5 and 10 while they were seated inside their mother's vehicle.
Hamner allegedly yelled racist obscenities at Cole before "punching his fist together" and telling her to get out of her car while throwing an object at her car.
Cole has been outspoken about the incident and also took multiple pictures of the suspect before reporting to authorities the alleged hate crime, according to the SPD blotter.
"The kids and I were in utter shock and confusion cause we just couldn't understand why he was targeting us especially since we hadn't had any interactions with the man," Cole
wrote on her personal Facebook page, explaining what happened.
Three days after the first incident, Hamner targeted two other Asian women on March 19 also while they were inside their car, court documents show.
He has been accused of blocking two victims with his vehicle in the middle of the road, blocking the traffic, and screaming similar insults at the two women. He also again threw projectiles at the victims."As victims Wong and Yao were attempting to drive by the defendant's car, the defendant cut them off, blocked traffic, and
yelled 'F-you Asian,'" the documents allege.
"The defendant then got out of his vehicle, charged at them, and threw an item at their vehicle."
Hamner's personal Facebook page is filled with posts supporting Black Lives Matter and condemning racism in the United States.In June 2020, he also
recorded a video of himself participating in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle, where he filmed and later posted anti-Trump and anti-police content.
Hamner's arraignment is scheduled for April 8 at the King County Courthouse.
Comment: On Monday a Filipino-American woman was
punched and kicked in the face on a sidewalk in Midtown, New York. Security guards inside the building on the street watched, but did not intervene. The man allegedly yelled "F*** you, you don't belong here" to the woman. The 65-year-old woman suffered a fractured pelvis, but was in stable condition.
The suspect was arrested Wednesday and identified as
Brandon Elliot:
In April 2002, Elliot was charged with murder for using a kitchen knife to stab his mother, Bridget Johnson in the chest three times in their East 224th Street home in the Bronx, according to previous reports. The deadly attack took place in front of Elliot's 5-year-old sister, sources told The Post. It's unclear what led to the slaying. Johnson, 42, died a couple of days later.
Elliot was convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years-to-life in prison. He was denied parole twice — first at a February 2017 hearing and again in December 2018, according to a state Department of Corrections official. But the following year, he was approved for release in September and sprung on lifetime parole two months later.
...
A resident at the Four Points by Sheraton — the West 40th Street homeless shelter where Elliot was staying during the alleged attack — said he knew the brute well after spending time with him at another shelter.
"He told me he was [a] diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic," the man, who declined to give his name, told The Post. "He's quiet. He doesn't talk much. He is really paranoid. He has mental issues."
This video is from the same day:
Q.: What is the world coming to ?
A.: More riots.