A Hispanic man in the Seattle area pleaded not guilty to second-degree assault and hate crime charges after a Black woman was accosted on a city bus and stabbed several times earlier this month in what police said was a racially motivated attack.
Adan Hernandez-Mayoral, 22, is accused of attacking the unidentified 43-year-old woman and using racial slurs toward her during the violent clash on March 7.
Weeks later, at his March 25 arraignment, Hernandez-Mayoral denied the charges, and the judge set his trial to begin May 20.
An evidentiary hearing will be held on April 8, and the case will be brought by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which said the attack on the woman was “completely unprovoked.”
For now, Hernandez-Mayoral remains in the King County Jail on a $250,000 bond following the random attack on a Black woman he had never crossed paths with before.
The suspect is no stranger to law enforcement as his rap sheet contains convictions for domestic violence, assault, harassment, and second-degree robbery, according to court records obtained by the Seattle Times.
Hernandez-Mayoral now faces accusations he beat up and stabbed a defenseless woman, but the victim, in this case, emerged without serious injuries as she was protected by a thick coat she had on, police said.
The alleged attack happened around nightfall, just outside the doors of a King County Metro bus, which came to a stop on Central Avenue South and South 259th Street after the woman complained to the driver, the Kent Police Department said previously.
There were multiple witnesses who later gave statements to authorities and provided video footage of the confrontation on the bus, as well as the fracas that erupted outside.
The identity of the woman was withheld by authorities as Hernandez-Mayoral allegedly threatened the victim due to her race, saying he did not like “Black people.”
The victim later identified her attacker and told police that he began ranting and making racist comments on the bus.
When she turned around to see who was speaking, the suspect turned his insults toward her.
At one point, the stranger told the woman to go sit in the back of the bus — and made a crude reference to Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her front seat to a white man in the 1950s sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and galvanized the civil rights movement.
The recent confrontation was a stark reminder of the continuing struggle for racial equality, echoing the challenges faced by Black Americans during the civil rights era nearly 70 years ago.
The situation threatened to escalate further as the victim heard the suspect spit, but she did not know if he had done so toward her.
Feeling afraid, the woman turned to the driver for help, urging him to call the police and stop the bus so she could get off.
At the same time, the suspect followed her to the front of the bus and appeared increasingly agitated as he paced back and forth in the aisle, court documents say.
When the bus finally stopped, the suspect demanded the woman to get off.
But before she had the chance to react, the man allegedly grabbed her by the throat and manhandled the woman off the bus, court records state.
Outside, the man punched the victim repeatedly as she tried to defend herself.
Moments later, another man who had been riding the bus with Hernandez-Mayoral intervened in the scuffle and briefly separated the two.
That’s when the woman was stabbed several times with a small pocketknife, leaving her with superficial flesh wounds, according to police.
Authorities arrived on the scene within minutes, but the suspect and the other man had already fled the area.
Police caught up with Hernandez-Mayoral the same night as he tried to hide underneath a car in a nearby neighborhood, and he was placed under arrest.
It was not clear if he had an attorney.
Police did not charge the second man in connection with the attack and withheld his name.
He was sent to the Kent City Corrections Facility and faces an obstruction charge for trying to interfere in his partner’s arrest.
The bus attack happened less than a week after Washington lawmakers approved an emergency hotline to help victims of hate crimes and bias incidents.
