The three people identified by police as the suspects in a water pellet drive-by and harassment incident outside Capitol Hill’s Pony gay bar have been charged with a hate crime.
The King County Prosecutor’s office says 19-year-old Justin Mayor, 24-year-old Jessica Clark, and a 17-year-old who police say the two adults admitted also joined Mayor in shouting slurs and firing off the water pellets have been charged under the state’s hate crime statute.
CHS reported here on SPD’s efforts to identify the trio following the late night February incident outside Pony as the suspects reported as “two or three young white men” were circling near 12th and Madison yelling “die faggots,” and firing pellets at people from a “water bead” gun.
SPD detectives sought the public’s help in identifying the suspects with video that clearly showed some of the occupants of the vehicle and distinctive white “WRLD” lettering on the rear window of the car. A Lexus matching the appearance of the suspect vehicle was also easily tracked down on social media. The vehicle reportedly made a loud banging sound when its engine roared.
Police originally tracked the vehicle to a previous owner who told them it had been stolen. Detectives discovered the car had actually been repossessed and tracked it to Clark.
The Seattle Police Department reports that Clark’s interview with detectives revealed the involvement of Mayor, the son of “the minister at an Episcopalian church in Puyallup,” according to Clark’s mother.
SPD says while both Clark and Mayor provided convoluted explanations for their actions that night and claimed to have been on the Hill to eat at Dave’s Hot Chicken unaware that Pony was a gay bar, they allegedly admitted their actions outside the E Madison club. Police say the defendants said they noticed the establishment because of people standing outside wearing “furry costumes.” They also allegedly implicated the 17-year-old in the harassment that night.
“Both Jessica and Justin came forward to willingly share this information about this incident with me,” the detective on the case wrote in the SPD report. “Jessica expressed she knows now that what they did was wrong. Justin has expressed his remorse, and understands what he did was wrong.”
The King County Prosecutor was less sympathetic than the detective, charging the trio with hate.
The next court date for the 24- and 19-year-old defendants is April 17th. The 17-year-old will return for a hearing on April 22 at the Clark Child and Family Justice Center. The defendants will be able to enter their initial plea at those arraignment hearings.
Prosecutors say they are not aware of any criminal history for the defendants. In the meantime, they have been ordered to stay away from Pony Bar.
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Glad we got this one solved, and our prosecutors really stuck it to some juvenile morons shooting water at people. How about the murders and shootings with actual, you know, guns outside Garfield HS or anywhere else?
You mean like this?
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2025/04/murder-charge-marshals-track-down-suspect-in-deadly-december-31st-shooting-at-broadway-and-pike/#more-2067289887
Just because you can’t walk and chew gum doesn’t mean everyone else can’t do more than one thing at a time.
Good news for you–the police are able to work on more than one crime at a time!
so much for the never catching them or jailing them.
The MAGA will never admit they say it though.
Huh? It’s not the despicable MAGA saying this, it’s the extreme far left saying over and over that SPD is completely useless. WTF are you talking about???
No…It’s MAGA claiming “the libs” do not jail people and support murder and drugs and on and on.
I was going to say that the son of a minister going all hate crimey is expected…except his dad’s church is supposed to be LGBTQ+ affirming.
I do hope Justin’s father, Mike, makes a statement about his son’s shitty behavior.
Of course, some people cannot be saved.
His mother’s Facebook page is also full of indicators that she is an ally.
Oh, so NOW they know what they did was wrong?
Bury these pieces of shit under the fucking jail.
My friends were the ones attacked that night and it left them really shaken, and worried that next time the bullets may not be gel and water. I grudgingly have to hand it to SPD for actually doing the legwork on this case instead of shrugging and saying “there’s nothing we can do” like they usually would in my experience.
Exactly how did they come foward to willingly share? Did they contact the detective when they heard he was looking for them? Did they come to his office? Or did the detective come to their homes? In the report the use of their first names instead of last names or full names possibly indicates unconscious bias, in order to portray them as “minor-adults.” god maybe we need robot cops to avoid this type of shit-bias. these ADULTS allegedly committed hate crimes. thank you KC prosecutors office. and don’t give me the talk about their brains not being fully formed please. what they did was wrong and they knew it. time for court.
I appreciate SPD and the King County Prosecutor for taking this seriously. With so much hatred directed at the LGBTQ+ communities, accountability for those who threaten or harm us is vital. Given the age of these defendants, I hope this experience teaches them an important lesson and motivates them to get to know who we are. Because honestly, we can be the best friends you ever had if you just give us a chance.
Capitol Hill sure sees crime differently depending on who the victims are. In the story about the person who was robbed of an expensive watch at gunpoint, it was the victim’s fault. But if the victims are furries, the perpetrators should be buried under the prison.
To me, the answer is simple. Send both sets of perpetrators to prison. And if you see someone committing a crime, use violence against them immediately.
it’s worth noting (noticing?) that these are different crimes. one is armed robbery, the other is terrorism. “crime” as an abstract specter of law-floutance is the kind of thinking that puts authoritarians into positions to abuse everyone.
It’s hard to feel anything more than ‘sucks to be robbed’ for that though, like all the parameters make it highly unrelatable except at the vaguest macro level of ‘all victims are the same actually’, like no they aren’t, nobody believes that or treats it that way, not even the ones acting like there’s some discrepancy in giving less of a shit about high value property theft.
Except it was an armed robbery of a person…. it wasn’t just a ‘property theft’.. what if the old guy had put up a fuss and they’d injured or even killed him? Would it have mattered if they were stealing a $40,000 watch or a $200 cell phone or a wallet with $10 in it? Would the person with the $10 be somehow more deserving of empathy? I don’t think so…
I don’t quake in the land of what if? to draw empathy or sympathy. Even walking out this exact incident, it does matter. Some shit isn’t opportunistic for whatever you have on your person that might be valuable and fencable, they involve more intel and planning especially for something that will be hard to fence given the intel of figuring out this person had the watch in the first place.
Where are you going with ‘all crimes are the same and we should all feel the same about them’ given nobody actually practices that and it’s a ludicrous practice even as you try?
You make a legitimate point. People try and justify this, but IMO it’s not justifiable.