Skateboarder Targets Elderly Woman in Hate Crime Incident

A 69-year-old African American woman was the victim of a hate crime Tuesday when a skateboarder shouted racial slurs and damaged her vehicle after she made a U-turn, according to Pasadena Police.

The incident occurred around 10:15 a.m. Tuesday at Linda Rosa Avenue and Foothill Boulevard, Pasadena Police Lieutenant Monica Cuellar reported.

The victim was making a U-turn in that area and partially blocked the street, not realizing there was a skateboarder approaching, Cuellar said.

When the skateboarder reached her car, he began yelling at her, escalating his ire into multiple racial slurs, according to Cuellar. After the woman parked her vehicle, the suspect approached the passenger side and used his skateboard to break off her side mirror.

The frightened victim drove away from the scene uninjured. She later returned to meet with responding officers, but the suspect had already fled, Cuellar explained.

Police have classified the incident as a hate crime based on the racial slurs and property damage, said Cuellar.

The suspect is described as a white man in his forties, approximately 5’10” with a medium build and shoulder-length dirty blonde hair. He was wearing a green patterned shirt and khaki pants at the time of the incident, and carried a skateboard with distinctive yellow paint on its underside, Cuellar said.

Police searched for security camera footage in the area but found that most cameras weren’t pointing toward the location where the confrontation occurred, said Cuellar.

No other damage to the vehicle was reported beyond the broken mirror, and the suspect did not display any weapons other than the skateboard used to damage the car, Cuellar said.

Anyone with information about this case is encouraged to call the Pasadena Police at (626) 744-4241 or report information anonymously by contacting “Crime Stoppers” at (800) 222-TIPS (8477) via your smartphone by downloading the “P3 Tips” Mobile App on Google Play or the Apple App Store, or by using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org