San Francisco, CA – Asuspect has been charged with a hate crime in San Francisco after a bizarre incident in which police say he used his skateboard to attack a 30-year-old Jewish man.
Officials say the incident occurred on Haight Street shortly after midnight on Dec. 17. The suspect, Eduardo Navarro Perez, 31, allegedly asked the victim “if he was Jewish or Black,” according to the city district attorney’s office, then attacked him after he said he was Jewish while making “disparaging remarks towards Jewish people.”
Police arrested Perez that same day and have held him in custody since, deeming him a threat to public safety. He faces a charge of assault with a deadly weapon in addition to the hate crime.
Brooke Jenkins, the newly elected district attorney who replaced ousted Chesa Boudin, announced the charges in a press release accompanied by a tweet on Thursday. Jenkins’ administration, like her predecessor’s, has stressed the importance of prosecuting hate crimes, particularly amid a rise in visible assaults and other crimes targeting people of Asian descent.
“There’s no place for antisemitism, or any crimes motivated by hate in SF, in our state, or anywhere else,” Jenkins wrote in the tweet. “This prosecution will send a message that our diversity & unity makes us strong – we will not sit idly by & allow anyone to be singled out and victimized b/c who they are.”
The prosecution marks a rare instance in recent years of an arrest following an anti-Jewish hate crime in San Francisco.
