The owner of a family-run coffee shop in San Jose’s Japantown was allegedly beaten with a metal torch early Tuesday.
Jasmine Rast, who runs the Roy’s Station Coffee and Tea on Jackson St., confronted a man who rode an e-bike onto the business’s property when he launched an attack on her.
Surveillance video from Roy’s Station Coffee and Tea, obtained by NBC Bay Area, shows the man chasing Rast through the driveway.
Rast told the news outlet that she arrived at the coffee shop around 5:30 a.m. and was unloading her car when she saw the man riding through the drive way on an e-bike.
The business has had repeated problems with vandalism behind the building, so she told him it was private property.
“He just ran at me,” Rast told NBC Bay Area. She said she thought he meant to scare her, so she ran, but he caught up and allegedly hit her repeatedly with the torch.
“The first hit I felt was on the back of my head, and then after that, I just started swinging my arms. I had my metal water bottle. I’m like, I’m just gonna start going at it,” she said.
Her screams brought her brother and father running. The family called the police, who took the suspect into custody and booked him in jail, according to NBC Bay Area.
Rast’s family told the news outlet that the business has been part of the community for generations, and that her father was violently assaulted in Japantown a few years ago.
They also said that police told them the man arrested Tuesday had been arrested 10 days earlier and then released.
Mahan’s office said the mayor is in touch with the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office about the case.
“There is a real human cost when we allow repeat offenders to cycle in and out of jail without meaningful intervention,” Mahan said in a statement to NBC Bay Area.
“Our state and county leaders need to fully implement Prop 36 so repeat offenders face real consequences – for some, that’s treatment. And for others, that’s time behind bars,” Mahan added.
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