The Dallas Police Department hosted a news conference at 2 p.m. Tuesday in regards to the recent arrest tied to the Korean salon shooting.
The FBI has opened a federal hate crime investigation into last week's shooting at the Hair World Salon in Dallas.
Last Wednesday, three women were wounded when a man burst into the Hair World Salon business on Royal Lane and opened fire with a rifle. The victims' wounds were not life-threatening.
On Friday, Dallas police confirmed they were treating this incident as a hate crime because the description of the shooter's getaway van was very similar to two other shootings, one of them in the same shopping center where Hair World is located and another in east Oak Cliff, just the day before the salon shooting.
Early Tuesday morning, just before 4:00 a.m. Dallas police confirmed they arrested 37-year old Jeremy Smith of Dallas in connection with the shooting on Royal Lane on May 11, 2022.
An arrest affidavit says Smith's girlfriend claims Smith was in an accident last year with an "Asian male" and since then has had delusions that an Asian mob is after him.
Federal criminal defense attorney Stephen Green says the crime elevates the possible penalty to life in prison. And Green says life in the federal system, means life.
"If you get a life sentence in the FEDS, you will not get out of prison unless the president commutes the sentence," Green said.
Late Monday, Dallas police, including Chief Garcia, met with members of the Korean community which feels especially threatened by this crime because that neighborhood in Dallas is heavily populated by Koreans and Korean-Americans.
In a statement to KRLD news the FBI says it's using the civil rights division of the Justice Department to conduct the investigation. That is as far as the FBI will comment.
If the Justice Department files federal charges as a hate crime it will elevate the severity of the charges and the result would be more severe penalties.
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