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Edmonds police are investigating a possible hate crime after graffiti was left on a shop window. The incident prompted the business owner to close up shop after only being open less than a month.

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“We take these things super seriously,” said Sergeant Shane Hawley with the Edmonds Police Department. “We have a zero tolerance policy for crime in general, especially when we are talking about malicious harassment or what people consider to be hate crimes … we don’t want to see that in the community.”

, Jawahar (Jay) Lal closed his convenience store after being open less than a month. Lal and his wife remodeled the store in the 23600 block of 100th Avenue West for about $30,000. But Lal reports that in the short time the store was open in May, people came in to tell him he didn’t belong in the neighborhood. He says that some implied he was from the Middle East (he and his family are from Fiji).

Lal had operated another business in the area near Highway 99 for 13 years before opening the new store on 100th Avenue West. They did not previously experience anything like what they did at the new location.

During the short time the new store was open, Lal was looking into opening an additional business at the location — a moving truck rental. Hawley says that tensions grew in the surrounding community over the truck rental business.

“That seems to be where most of the concern from the neighborhood came,” Hawley said. “They didn’t want a truck rental service there.”

Following tense in-person interactions, the final straw was when Lal found “Go Bac” spray painted on his store window on May 28.

The graffiti incident is being investigated as malicious harassment, which equates to a hate crime under Washington state law. But Lal has opted to close the store. There is a person of interest in the crime: a man, likely between the ages of 40 and 50, 5’8″, medium build, and sandy hair.

“He had come into the business the day before (May 27),” Hawley said. “According to the business owner he had expressed some concerns and dissatisfaction with the possible U-Haul truck service going in there.”

鈥�(Lal) had some issues over the past week or so related to the fact he was looking to bring in a truck rental business to that location, in addition to the business he already had,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd there had been some community concerns from the local neighborhood and he thought that was kind of suspicious and that he was being targeted for that, and potentially because of his race.鈥�

Hawley says that there was a private meeting between Lal, the property owner, and some neighbors about the issue of the truck rental business.

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“To actually talk to the neighbors and give them a chance to voice their concerns or say what they felt issues might be related to it,” Hawley said. “And shortly after that meeting, he ends up with his window spray painted.”

“Thankfully, we don’t have a lot of these incidents,” he said. “Obviously anytime we have one, they become quite noteworthy. I think last year we had two incidents we investigated along these lines.”

Days after the incident, Edmonds’ Diversity Commission issued the following statement:

The Edmonds Diversity Commission wishes to express its deep concern over the recent unfortunate incident in which the shop window of a local merchant, originally from Fiji, was painted over with the words 鈥淕o Bac鈥� (sic) 鈥� this after he had been visited on previous days by neighbors who had suggested the merchant did not belong in that neighborhood. This kind of reprehensible treatment of any Edmonds resident or business owner is unacceptable in our community.