VANCOUVER, Wash. — Nini Johnson has called her East Vancouver neighborhood home for nearly two decades. She will be the first to tell you she has had no complaints until recently.
"This is happening back to back," Johnson said. "It's getting way too serious."
Johnson, mother of four kids between two and eight, says the week before last someone threw a brick through the windshield of a car parked in the driveway. That would not be a huge deal if not for the brick that was tossed through the front window of the house just one month earlier.
"One of my kids could've been hit," she said. "I just pulled a glass shard out of my kid's foot the other day."
Johnson says while the brick through the window and the windshield was scary, nothing compares to what happened in May. Johnson says someone fired a gun at the house. The bullet went right through the garage door.
"My children go out in the garage all the time and they play out there," she said. "What if anyone could've been walking past and hurt?"
Johnson says her family is one of the only Black families in the neighborhood. She cannot help but think this is racially motivated.
"To do that to someone, that is just horrible," she said.
Community members who are rallying around the Johnson family also wonder if race is involved.
"The color of my skin, the color of Nini's skin, isn't cause to be a jerk," said Faith Lightsy of Strive Clark County.
For now, Johnson hopes the attacks on her and her family end.
"You've put so much fear into the heart of me, my children and my mom to the point we don't feel safe in our own home."
The Vancouver Police Department is investigating the incidents. They do not believe they are racially motivated. They say they have responded to two dozen calls at the Johnson home over the last two years. Authorities believe what is happening may be connected to people who come and go from the house. Johnson says the police department's response to this is dehumanizing and belittling.