KGMI News
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) – Two men have been arrested in Spokane for an alleged hate crime.
Spokane police say 32-year-old Jason Edward Cooper is accused of shouting racial slurs at his neighbor, Norris Cooley, punching him in the face and pointing a gun at his head before firing rounds into Cooley’s home.
Cooper and 36-year-old Donald Lucas Prichard were arrested late Monday night. On Tuesday they were charged with first-degree assault and malicious harassment.
The 66-year-old Cooley is a black man who police say was berated and violently attacked for no reason other than the color of his skin.
Cooper’s girlfriend told detectives her boyfriend is a “supremacist” who had “white power” tattooed on his leg.
Spokane NAACP President Phil Tyle says these brazen behaviors are growing, but that “we too must grow…in our opposition and denunciation of hate.”