Suspect Faces Hate Crime Charges After Gay Bar Arson Attempt
A man in police custody for a separate offense was charged with a hate crime for allegedly trying to set an LGBTQ pub on fire.
A man currently in police custody for one crime has now been charged with a separate hate crime for allegedly attempting to set an LGBTQ pub on fire.
The Neighbor’s, a Santa Cruz-based pub that describes itself on its website as an “LGBTQ+ centric and socially responsible restaurant and community space,” recently held a soft opening, complete with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, in early December.
A few days after its opening, the venue, was nearly set alight by a masked individual.
Owner Frankie Farr told Lookout Santa Cruz that they initially noticed a black discoloration near the front doorway and thought it was graffiti. Upon closer inspection, they noticed the Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant door push button was melted off, burned napkins had been shoved inside the door frame, and a homophobic slur had been carved into the door’s glass.
Farr thought that it looked as if somebody had tried to start a fire.
After police arrived on the scene, they deemed it “arson with a hate incident, but not yet deemed a hate crime.” Police also found burnt material near the doorway and scorch marks on a section of the wall of the enclave leading to the bar’s front doors.
According to officers, a camera inside captured a small portion of the incident. A still frame of the surveillance video, obtained by Lookout Santa Cruz, shows a man wearing a black hat and a red face mask carting around what looks like a red wagon filled with various materials.
Santa Cruz police subsequently identified the suspect as 45-year-old James Eason, claiming they could identify him by comparing body camera footage from an arrest in a separate, unrelated case the week before. Because Eason was already in police custody in connection to that other case, he was rebooked on charges of vandalism, arson, and a hate crime on December 13.
The Neighbor’s has remained operational for the four days of the week it is typically open.
Farr told Lookout Santa Cruz they were shocked at how quickly the space was targeted but acknowledged the risk in opening a queer business, telling the newspaper that “there are a lot of people who clearly do not want us to exist.”
“We’re very fortunate that nobody was inside,” they said. “However, there are apartments above [the pub] and those residents don’t deserve this either. They could have been seriously injured.”
Initial reports of the attempted arson drew condemnation from local leaders, as reported by Salinas, California-based NBC affiliate KSBW.
“The people who did this, you don’t have a place in our community,” Santa Cruz Mayor Freed Keeley said. “You can have a different point of view, politically, no problem with that and we celebrate that as well. When you start doing things like setting fire to a business, no. That has no place in Santa Cruz or any other community as far as I’m concerned.”
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