Neighbor charged with hate crime after harassing family ‘for hours,’ WA officials say

A Washington woman is charged with a hate crime after she harassed her neighbors “for hours” and threatened to “kill everyone,” officials said.

Cassandra Jameson, 38, started “yelling racial and derogatory comments” at her neighbors while they were setting up for a baby shower in their Port Orchard apartment complex’s parking lot Friday, according to Kitsap County Superior Court documents.

According to the documents:

The victims were Black and Pacific Islander, but Jameson, assuming the family was Mexican, started the verbal attack by yelling that “they needed to go ‘back over the fence.’”

After a while, “she then accused the family of being the ‘cause of the flu,’ insinuating they were Chinese.”

One of the victims told officers “the relentless verbal assault continued for hours” and Jameson later threatened “at least four times” to shoot the family.

“Along with making vague threats about owning firearms and shooting the family, the suspect stated she had a bow and arrow and would kill everyone,” documents state.

One of the victims told officers she never saw Jameson show a gun “but still felt for her safety due to the consistent belittling and threats of harm.”

Jameson left the scene in her Hyundai Accent but officers later found her inside the car in an Albertsons parking lot.

“[Jameson] was erratic with her behaviors and spoke with extreme randomness,” an officer wrote in the police report. “[She] was obviously in an altered state of mind.”

Officers arrested Jameson for malicious harassment and she was booked into the Kitsap County Jail on $20,000 bail. She was still in custody as of Tuesday.

She has been charged with one count of a hate crime, which carries a maximum penalty of five years of imprisonment and/or a $10,000 fine.

This story was originally published April 20, 2021 at 4:34 PM with the headline "Neighbor charged with hate crime after harassing family ‘for hours,’ WA officials say."