Attack On Peninsula Lawmaker's Home Probed As Hate Crime: Report

SAN MATEO, CA — Police are investigating the attack on the home of a San Mateo councilwoman as a hate crime according to a published report.

According to police, someone threw an approximately 3-inch rock at Councilwoman Amourence Lee’s North Central neighborhood home shortly before noon on Tuesday, The San Mateo Daily Journal reports.

Lee was in her home at the time of the attack with her husband and two children, but nobody was in the front-facing room when the rock went through a window and no injuries were reported.

“This hurts actually, it does. It hurts me and it hurts my family,” Lee said in a video she posted on her Facebook page Tuesday.

The first Asian-American woman to serve on the San Mateo City Council isn’t sure whether the attack is tied to the recent discovery of racist graffiti targeting those of Chinese descent at the Crystal Springs Shopping Center, or her vocal support of the Black Lives Matter movement, the report said.

Lee has worked with Coalition Z, a national youth activist group that has organized a protest of the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd, the report said.

Floyd died after a disgraced Minneapolis police officer who has since been fired kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes as three other police officers stood by idly.

The protest is scheduled to be held on Wednesday June 3 at 5 p.m. at San Mateo City Hall.

“It’s hard to know if this is racially motivated, but the timing of it seems to indicate hate crime,” Lee told The Daily Journal. “It was intentional, it was violent and it was meant to cause fear.”

But the San Mateo lawmaker said she won’t be intimidated.

“I’m not going to stop being who I am,” she told The Daily Journal.

“I’m not going to stop advancing the work of justice … I don’t think this defines who we are as a community.”

Police spokesman Officer Michael Haobsh told The Daily Journal that investigators are analyzing surveillance footage that appears to capture one potential suspect.

He said the case is being investigated as felony vandalism with a possible hate crime enhancement, the report said.

“We’re investigating if it meets the elements of a hate crime,” he told The Daily Journal.

Read more in The San Mateo Daily Journal

Correction: A previous version of this article reported that Councilwoman Lee was the first Asian-American to serve on the council. She is in fact the first Asian-American woman to serve on the council. David Lim was the first Asian-American to serve on the council. We regret this error.