(CNN) Los Angeles police have charged a man with two hate crimes after he allegedly shot two separate Jewish men earlier this week, US Attorney Martin Estrada said at a press conference on Friday.
The 28-year-old is accused of targeting and shooting two Jews “because they were Jews or he believed they were Jews” and “motivated by hatred,” Estrada said.
The man was arrested Thursday and taken into federal custody, he said. He is expected to be arraigned on Friday afternoon, he said.
An “exhaustive” search for the suspect was launched after the victims were shot separately in the city’s west Pico-Robertson neighborhood on Wednesday and Thursday, about three blocks apart, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement. release.
The two victims were Jewish men, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna SAYS. Officials have not yet publicly identified the victims.
“These attacks against members of our Jewish community in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood are completely unacceptable,” Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement. “In a time of increasing anti-Semitism, these acts understandably put communities on edge. Last December, I stood blocks from where these incidents took place as we celebrated the first night of Hanukkah together.”
The shootings come amid a rise in antisemitic violence across the country. According to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic attacks reached an all-time high in the US in 2021 – 34% from 2020.
The suspect was found in Riverside County, about an hour’s drive east of Los Angeles, police said. Detectives found more evidence, they said, including a rifle and handgun.
The announcement of the arrest was confirmed by an earlier report by CNN, which was the first news organization to report that the suspect had been arrested.
Earlier, authorities said they were looking for a suspect described as an Asian man with a mustache and goatee, possibly driving a white compact car. A license plate recorded near the scene of one of the shootings helped authorities locate and arrest the suspect, a law enforcement source told CNN.
“The facts of the case lead to this crime being investigated as a hate crime,” Los Angeles police said.
The FBI is also investigating the attacks as hate crimes, Bass said in his statement.
Federal agents responsible for domestic terrorism and hate crime investigations are looking into the suspect’s background to determine possible violations of federal law, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN.
At about 10 a.m. Wednesday, the first victim was walking to their car when a man drove by and shot twice before fleeing the scene, a police spokesman told CNN.
The next day, around 8:30 a.m., the second victim was walking to his home nearby when a man drove up and shot him from inside a car, then fled, the spokesman said.
Both victims were taken to local hospitals and are in stable condition, the spokesman said.
They were walking home from places of worship when they were shot, said Laura Fennell, Director of Communications for the Anti-Defamation League West.
The man shot Thursday was a member of the Beit El synagogue, which is about two blocks away from where police say he was shot, the synagogue confirmed to CNN. They did not identify the victim but said his injuries were minor.
“The victim who was shot today is a pillar of our community here at Beit El. He has been a beloved member for many years,” Beit El said in an email Thursday. They added, “The victim had just finished morning prayer services, was walking to his car wearing his kippah, and was shot three times at point-blank range.”
“Our community has been shaken to its core,” by the two shootings, Beit El said. “But we are strong and united.”
The synagogue said it was cooperating with the police to implement security measures. Los Angeles police and the sheriff’s department also said they have increased law enforcement presence and patrols around neighborhoods and Jewish places of worship.
“The Los Angeles Police Department is aware of the concern these crimes have raised in the surrounding community. We are in close contact with religious leaders as well as individual and organizational stakeholders in the community,” said the department’s release. .
The investigation, which also includes state authorities, is ongoing and more information will be released in the coming days, police said.
The Los Angeles shootings come just a week after San Francisco authorities added a hate crime to charges against a man they say fired a replica gun inside a Bay-area synagogue earlier this month. No one was hurt.
The hate crime allegation against the suspect is tied to statements he made during the incident as well as social media posts he made involving “several postings by an individual dressed as a Nazi -type clothing,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said at a news conference. A lawyer for the suspect, Deputy Public Defender Olivia Taylor, said outside court that the man “is not guilty of any hate crime.”
A few days ago in New Jersey, a man allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue in Bloomfield in an attempt to set it on fire. The suspect has been charged with a federal crime.
And in December, a 63-year-old man was attacked in New York’s Central Park in what police called an antisemitic attack.
