A California man was arrested this month after police say he attacked three people with a metal pipe. There were two incidents police were called for, one where one man was threatened and another where two people were injured. In both cases, the suspect used racial slurs during the altercations.
The Santa Monica Police Department states a white man identified as Job Uriah Taylor wreaked havoc on three people before being taken in by authorities. Now, he is charged with two counts of attempted murder, one count of assault with a deadly weapon, and one count of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury.
SMPD says Taylor was hit with hate crime allegations attached to the murder and assault charges.
On the previous Friday, March 3, police were called first at 7:30 a.m. after Taylor was seen threatening to assault an African-American man as he was walking his dog on the beach.
The man attempted to hit the victim with a metal pipe while simultaneously yelling racial slurs.
On-duty workers from the Santa Monica Fire Department witnessed the incident and intervened, ultimately fending off the suspect. The suspect identified as Taylor fled the scene before police arrived, riding “away on his bicycle in an unknown direction.”
Fortunately, the first victim was not hurt.
The second incident happened approximately 20 minutes later, according to an SMPD dispatch. This time two Black people, a male and a female, were assaulted with the same metal pipe Taylor brandished earlier in the morning. Like in the first altercation, the man hurled racial slurs toward his victims.
This time, when officers arrived he was taken into custody and booked in a Santa Monica Jail.
The two victims were taken to a local hospital, where one was released the same day and the other got treatment for a head injury.
The state of California defines a hate crime as “a crime against a person, group, or property motivated by the victim’s real or perceived protected social group. You may be the victim of a hate crime if you have been targeted because of your actual or perceived: (1) disability, (2) gender, (3) nationality, (4) race or ethnicity, (5) religion, (6) sexual orientation, and (7) association with a person. or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics.”
The incident was labeled a hate crime because Taylor used racial epithets when attacking the man and woman.
According to a Santa Monica city report, there were seven hate crimes perpetrated in the municipality in 2022. Of them, three assaults were carried out on Black people. Others in protected groups were victims, including one white person, one person of Arab descent, one homophobic assault, and three anti-Semitic attacks.
Police state there is no room in the city for hate, writing, “It is the mission of the Santa Monica Police Department to safeguard the rights of all individuals irrespective of their disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and/or association with a person or group with one or more of these perceived characteristics.”
“Hate crimes have no place in Santa Monica,” the statement contends.
SMPD Criminal Investigations Division (CID) detectives are now turning to the public to ask for witnesses who may have seen the incidents happen.
