(Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)

A Salem man faces charges alleging he hurled racist slurs at a landscaper before assaulting him Monday.

Jeffery L. Degallery, 57, was charged Tuesday with first-degree bias crime and and fourth-degree assault in Marion County Circuit Court.

The charges allege Degallery physically injured the man because of his perception of the man’s national origin, court records showed.

At noon Monday, Salem police responded to a report of an assault at 1165 Liberty Road and spoke with the victim, who told police he was a landscaper for the apartment complex, according to a probable cause affidavit.

He told police he was blowing off the sidewalk in front of the building when a man he didn’t know approached him and began yelling at him, calling him a “dirty Mexican” as well as a slur used to refer to Mexican people, the affidavit said.

The victim said the man, who police later identified as Jeffery Degallery, shoved him in the chest causing him to fall backwards, hit a parked truck and hurt this back.

Had the car not been there, the victim said he would have fallen to the ground and been really hurt. The assailant also told him to “go back to his own country,” the affidavit said.

The victim told police the man came out from between two houses across the street. An office later spoke with Degallery and asked him what had happened with the an across the street.

“Degallery told me nothing had happened, but he had (videotaped) it,” a Salem officer wrote in the affidavit. “He told me there was a conspiracy going on to get him into trouble. He told me the male across the street did not work there and was a stalker. Degallery told me the Mexicans were stalking him.”

The victim told police the man they were speaking with was the one who assaulted him, and Degallery as taken into custody.

He was released Wednesday from the Marion County Jail, according to a release agreement filed in Marion County Circuit Court.

-Ardeshir Tabrizian

By Salem Reporter