(Photo courtesy of Lafayette Elementary)

The Metropolitan Police Department responded to a suspected hate crime near Lafayette Elementary School in Northwest D.C. Monday afternoon, where a man in a car allegedly yelled anti-Latino slurs at a crossing guard and threatened to shoot him or run him over.

According to the incident report, the crossing guard stopped the man in the car from driving across the intersection. The man then reportedly began yelling at the crossing guard, who is Latino, using racial slurs and berating him about being an immigrant. The man told the crossing guard that he “did not belong working in this area around white kids,” and said that he was lucky he didn’t shoot him or run him over, according to police.

The driver then allegedly sped down the street, then made a U-turn and came back to verbally berate the crossing guard again, telling the crossing guard that he was an ex-marine who “used to shoot people like him at the border,” and again threatening to run the crossing guard over, according to the incident report.

Police have put high visibility patrols around the area for the next few days, and are currently searching for the driver and investigating the incident as a hate crime. NBC 4 reports that the crossing guard has been temporarily reassigned to another school.

Police have a photo of the driver’s car, according to NBC. MPD sent out a press release with a description of the suspect and his vehicle late Wednesday afternoon. He’s described as a black male, at least 50 years old, and between 5’8″ and 5’10”. He was wearing a dark-colored baseball cap and a blue t-shirt.

The vehicle is described as a dark-colored Nissan Murano with California tags reading DLR890651. You can see video of the car at the crosswalk here.

Reported hate crimes in the District have leapt up in recent years. In 2016, they rose by 62 percent from the year before, reaching a total of 107. Last year there were even more, at 179. This year so far, there have been 101, which is outpacing last year’s numbers year-to-date.

There was also some public uproar on Monday when it was discovered that there were issues with the original 911 call reporting the incident. The District’s emergency dispatch center, the Office of Unified Communications, is now considering taking disciplinary action against a 911 dispatcher who fielded the original call.

A third party, named by several outlets as a parent at Lafayette named Lily Buerkle, called the police initially at 3:28 p.m. to report that she had seen a man “acting erratic” at a crosswalk at Lafayette Elementary School, and that someone had threatened to shoot or run over the crossing guard, says Wanda Gattison, a spokesperson for OUC.

A dispatcher classified it as a lower-priority call, a decision that Gattison is calling a mistake. The dispatcher miscategorized the call because she didn’t interpret the danger of the situation correctly, Gattison says.

The call sat in the queue for 27 minutes, when a school employee called 911 again, Gattison says. That employee called at 3:58 p.m., a dispatch was sent out at 4 p.m., and officers were on scene by 4:05, Gattison says. The OUC is now investigating the incident, she adds.

The Post reports that Buerkle sent an email to Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, alerting her about the delayed police response.

“The sluggish police and 911 response was alarming,” Buerkle said in her email, according to the Post. “My daughter is pretty upset at what she witnessed today. She continues to ask where that man is and if he is going to come back.”

In a statement, DCPS said it was “disheartened by the events outside of Lafayette Elementary School yesterday. School staff contacted the Metropolitan Police Department immediately upon learning of the incident, and additional officers were on site to support the safety and security of the campus.”

This post has been updated to reflect that the incident happened on Monday, not on Tuesday, and with additional information from MPD.