"This is Home": Boulder Community Determined to Reclaim Pearl Street After Hate Crime Attack

In the wake of Sunday's hate crime attack, Gil Eskayo walked Boulder's Pearl Street on Monday, June 2, wearing a gold Star of David around his neck and a kippah on his head.

The day before, in the same spot Eskayo stood, demonstrators advocating for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza were attacked by a man wielding a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails, injuring a dozen of them. The man, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, reportedly shouted "Free Palestine" during the assault and later told police he "wanted them to all die."

The chaotic crime scene was eerily quiet 24 hours later. The historic Boulder County Courthouse and some neighboring businesses closed their doors. Residents walking the street were outnumbered by reporters looking to document the aftermath of Sunday's attack. But Eskayo, a Jewish Israeli citizen, says it is important that he be visible.

"[I'm] being proudly Jewish for those who don't feel like they can," says Eskayo, a recent University of Colorado Boulder graduate and a volunteer with Stories of Anti-Semitism. "There's a stigma around Jewish people that we're scared, that we'll hide away when bad things happen to us. ...That's not the Israeli way."

According to arrest affidavits, Soliman told police he planned the attack for over a year, saying he did it to get "revenge" against Israelis for the war in Gaza. He searched for local Zionist groups online and found the weekly Run for Their Lives event held in Boulder.  

Police say he attempted to buy a firearm to carry out the attack, but was denied because he is not a citizen. Instead, he watched YouTube videos about how to make Molotov cocktails. He allegedly wore a weed-spraying backpack filled with gasoline and brought eighteen glass bottles filled with gasoline and stuffed with rags, according to the affidavits. He threw two of the flaming bottles at the demonstrators, police claim.

"Mohamed said he wanted them to all die and that was the plan," the Boulder Police Department's affidavit reads. "He said he would go back and do it again and had no regret doing what he did." 

None of the twelve victims were killed in the attack, police say. Two of them are still in the hospital with serious injuries as of Monday afternoon.

Soliman is facing a federal hate crime charge, in addition to the following state charges: sixteen counts of first-degree attempted murder, two counts of use of an incendiary device, and sixteen counts of attempted use of an incendiary device. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 624 years for the state charges and a life sentence for the federal hate crime charge. He's currently being held in the Boulder County Jail on a $10 million bond.

The Boulder Police Department, FBI, U.S. Attorney's Office and 20th Judicial District Attorney's Office are still investigating the incident. As their work continues, Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn says he feels "heartened" by the community's response.

"This morning, I walked down Pearl Street with members of my team," Redfearn said during a law enforcement press conference on Monday. "I was heartened by the resilience of our community, the positive attitude that people had. ...I walked out of that thinking, 'We're going to be okay once again as a community. We're going to recover.'"
The Boulder community is no stranger to tragedy. In 2021, ten residents were killed in a mass shooting at a King Soopers grocery store in the city, around three miles from the site of Sunday's attack. That same year, the Marshall fire ravaged Boulder County, killing two and destroying 1,084 homes, making it the state's most destructive wildfire to date.

This latest blow to Boulder comes amid rising national tensions in response to the Israeli-Palestinian war, which has reportedly killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and over 1,700 Israelis since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Less than two weeks prior to the Boulder incident, a gunman murdered two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., reportedly chanting "Free, free Palestine" afterward.

A Jewish Boulder resident visiting the attack site on Monday says he wasn't surprised by the news of Sunday's attack; he knew four of the victims injured in the assault, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor.

"I wasn't shocked and that sucks. That's how I should feel," says the man, who asked not to use his name.

In the aftermath, the community response has been "love," he adds, "which I'm not surprised about either. That's why we are a close-knit community. ...I felt obligated to and felt drawn to [come here today]."

Jasmine Summers says she lives ten minutes from Pearl Street. She was at the Boulder County Courthouse on Friday for a ceremony recognizing its designation as a national historic landmark. She was on the Pearl Street Mall for meetings and errands on Saturday and Sunday, shortly before the attack happened. When Summers woke up this morning, she felt she had to come back.

“I don’t know what came over me. I just got out [of the shower] and I told my husband I have to go down there. I have to reclaim it," Summers says. “This is home. This is safety. …It rattled me. I couldn’t make peace with it."
Summers says she watched officials power-wash burn scars from the sidewalk on Monday morning. Her eyes lingered on a spot where videos of the attack showed a woman lying on the ground as bystanders attempted to treat her burn wounds.

Two days earlier, Summers had stood in that same spot. Her seventeen-year-old grandson, Wilbur Thayer, laid flowers on the area Monday: “I wish I knew where all of them had been," Thayer says.

“I guess we’re just trying to process the grief," Summers adds.

Soliman's next court hearing is scheduled for Thursday, June 5.