A Triangle woman allegedly connected to neo-Nazis faces charges for her involvement in a racially motivated attack on a black disc jockey in Washington state on Saturday. She was fired from her job at a Chapel Hill salon two months ago over her “toxic beliefs.”
Leah Northcraft, twenty-five, faces felony charges of malicious harassment—a hate crime in Washington State—and criminal mischief. She is currently being held in the Snohomish County Correction Jail on a $15,000 bond. Northcraft appeared in court this morning, and her case was continued, according to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office. (Sheriff’s Office records say that Northcraft lives in Raleigh; however, a database search shows that her last known address is in Hillsborough.)
According to the police, Northcraft entered the Rec Room Bar in Lynnwood, Washington, early Saturday morning with seven men and began harassing the DJ, who is black. The group shouted racial slurs while beating the DJ. His equipment was also damaged in the attack. The DJ was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. An Asian man who came to the DJ’s defense was also injured in the attack.
Officers arrived on the scene as the group was attempting to flee. They were later stopped and arrested.
Travis Condor, of Pittsburgh; Guy Miller, of Tacoma, Washington; Vincent Nutter, of Bothell, Washington; Nathaniel Woodell, of Woodstock, Illinois; Daniel Dorson of Corvallis, Oregon; and Cory Colwell of Eugene, Oregon, were also charged in the attack.
Condor participated in the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Washington attack took place the day after James Alex Fields Jr. was convicted of murdering Heather Heyer by driving his car into counter-protesters in Charlottesville.
The Washington attack took place on “Martyr’s Day,” a so-called white supremacist holiday commemorating the anniversary of Robert Jay Mathews’s death, the SPLC reports. Matthews was the white supremacist leader of The Order, a domestic terrorist group from the 1980s.
“We do not and will not ever tolerate acts of hate in Snohomish County,” Sheriff Ty Trenary said in a press release. “The violent behavior directed at members of our community over the weekend simply because of their race is disgusting. The Sheriff’s Office is partnering with the FBI in hopes of getting the strongest sentencing possible for these hate crimes.”
Northcraft previously worked at the Chapel Hill salon To the Woods. In October, she was terminated after managers learned of her connections to white supremacists, according to salon co-owner Jamie Phillips.
“This is not us,” Phillips says. “This is not who we are. We’re a welcoming community and small business, and as soon as we found out anything about this we terminated her employment. We would just like as much distance between her and the salon as possible.”
