A man was recently indicted on seven counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon by a grand jury in connection to a hair salon shooting in May.
Jeremy Smith stands accused of firing 13 shots inside Hair World Salon in Dallas on May 11. The 37-year-old went into the salon dressed in all black and opened fire with a .22-caliber rifle. He then allegedly drove away from the scene in a maroon minivan, DPD said.
The seven counts Smith was indicted on are for seven people affected by the shooting. Three women inside the salon were hit by gunfire. Four witnesses said the gunfire endangered them.
One of the people injured in the shooting expressed worry at a community meeting with police on the night of May 16, after Smith was arrested. With her arm in a sling, she wondered how she would continue to make a living.
After a review of the evidence, a grand jury determined there was enough probably cause to indict Smith for the crimes.
Smith was initially held on a $300,000 bond for charges related to the three people who were hit in the gunfire. Authorities later added four additional counts due to the four other people saying they were threatened. His bond was then increased to $700,000.
Smith allegedly targeted the salon due to bias against Asian Americans. The salon is located in the heart of Koreatown, a part of Dallas that was transformed from an industrial area in the 1980s into a thriving retail district. Now, the area is filled with places for shopping, dining, health checks, and beautification.
The alleged crime constitutes a hate crime under Texas law, and as such, the FBI said it launched a federal hate crime investigation into the case. The U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division and federal prosecutors also got involved in the case.
An arrest affidavit stated that Smith’s girlfriend told police that he thought Asian Americans were trying to harm him. She told detectives about how he had been delusional about Asian Americans since he was involved in a car crash with an Asian man in 2020. Since then, she said he had delusions that the “Asian mob is after him or attempting to harm him” whenever he is around an Asian American.
According to the girlfriend, the delusions were so severe that he had been admitted to several mental health facilities before the shooting. She said he once verbally attacked his boss, who was of Asian descent, an incident that got him fired from his job.
It is unclear whether authorities confirmed that Smith had been diagnosed with a mental illness. It is also unknown if the gun Smith allegedly used in the salon shooting was legally obtained.
