Couple attacked with hammer at gas station for apparently having 'fancy' boat, being white

NEWARK, New Jersey (WABC) -- A couple driving home to Massachusetts was allegedly attacked by a woman from New Jersey with a hammer in Virginia.

"I hear this woman yelling something about a message," said Bob, the victim. "I don't know who she's talking to."

He says she was yelling at him and the shouts quickly turned into a vicious, unprovoked attack.

"She gets in my face and says, 'You got a message for me with your fancy boat?'" he said. "She starts punching me, scratching at me."

Authorities in Virginia say the quick glance of the suspect, captured by a witness' cellphone, belongs a 26-year-old Angela Jones, of Newark.

Bob, who lives in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, said he was refueling at a gas station and was headed home from Florida when Jones began taunting him and his wife Kathy with race and class-laced insults.

"She called my wife a white (expletive) and spit in her face," Bob said.

"She ran over to me," Kathy said. "She looked at me and said, 'I'm tired of you white (expletive)'"

"She said, 'I've got something in my car that I can put a hole in your boat,'" Bob said. "I thought it was a gun, but thank God it wasn't. It was a carpenter hammer."

Police said Jones left substantial damage on the couple's Porsche and boat with that hammer, before she turned to attack Bob.

"She clawed him," Caroline County Sheriff Tony Lippa said. "He took her to the ground to prevent her from doing any more damage."

Jones jumped in her Jeep and drove off.

"Whatever she saw in us, she decided to teach me a lesson, I guess," Bob said.

Jones faces malicious wounding, assault and destruction of property charges in what police are calling a hate crime.