Jan Myers, a 72-year-old white woman who was arrested in April and charged with a hate crime after allegedly hurling slurs at a Vietnamese neighbor, was accused in a lawsuit this week of continuing to harass the woman’s family in violation of a no-contact order.
But on Wednesday, police say, Myers was at it once again: this time allegedly attacking the family with her car.
According to an arrest report, obtained by The Daily Beast, at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Myers “screamed and yelled” at Thi Pham and her husband William Healy from her home next door to theirs in Shoreline, Washington. She then got in her car and approached Healy, according to the report, driving her car straight at him, and causing him to fear being hit. The report said Healy moved out the way and retreated into his home.
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Myers was arrested and charged with felony violation of her court order and felony vehicular assault. According to jail records, she is still incarcerated. Myers’ attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Healy also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to Casey McNerthney, a spokesman with the Kings County Prosecutor’s Office, Myers made her first appearance on the charge on Thursday afternoon.
McNerthney said his office was alerted about the arrest, and that the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office asked a judge to hold Myers in jail on $25,000 bail, arguing she is a danger to the community based on the escalating behavior, her pending hate-crime case, and Pham and her family’s fear of her.
However, McNerthney said, a judge set bail at $10,000 because of Myers’ lack of conviction history. The judge did, however, find probable cause for the violation of the no-contact order.
In 2017, Pham moved to the community in Shoreline from her native Vietnam to live with Healy. According to a previous police report, Myers, her next-door neighbor, quickly began targeting her with slurs like “Miss Vietnam” and “Miss Saigon,” even alleging she was a mail-order bride.
In April, amid a national surge of hate crimes against people of Asian descent, the years-long feud escalated. Pham called the police to allege Myers had threatened her and said, “You’re not gonna live very long,” before driving away. Myers was arrested and charged with a felony hate crime.
But according to the lawsuit against her, and as previously confirmed by the King County Sheriff’s Office to The Daily Beast, on May 23, Myers appeared to violate the order barring her from contact with her neighbors.
Nonetheless, she remained on the street, setting the stage for the Wednesday incident.
