The family of a 70-year-old Redmond motel owner is fearful of violent, race-related retaliation one week after a Eugene man is alleged to have brutally beaten the woman, an Indian immigrant.

“We don’t want people get our name and do stupid stuff,” said Satish Puri, co-owner of the Hub Motel with his wife, Meena, whose neck was broken during the attack. “He might have friends with the same kind of hate-crime ideas in their brains, and we don’t want to expose ourselves to the same kind of phenomenon again and again.”

Meena Puri remains hospitalized at St. Charles Bend and faces a lengthy recovery.

James David Lamb Jr., 53, is an inmate of the Deschutes County jail facing felony bias crime and attempted murder charges in the alleged beating of Meena Puri.

According to law enforcement officials, Lamb was staying at the motel at 1128 NW Sixth St. on the morning of Dec. 31. Around 6:30 a.m., he allegedly used a garbage can to break the glass entry door to the motel manager’s office and attacked Meena Puri inside.

After the alleged attack, Lamb returned to a room he was renting at the motel. He surrendered to responding officers when they knocked on his door, police said.

Satish Puri said Lamb grabbed his wife’s hair during the attack.

Doctors at St. Charles expect Meena Puri to be released from the trauma wing to the rehab wing in about a week and a half, her husband said. She could be out of the hospital in about a month.

Relatives traveled from India and Los Angeles to be with Meena Puri while she recovers.

“The whole family is here,” Satish Puri said. “We just want to keep ourselves out of the news as much as possible. The person responsible, they know what they did. I have no idea why he did it.”

Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel said during the attack, Lamb made statements regarding Puri’s Indian heritage and “expressed desire to rid America of people like her.”

Lamb was initially charged with six crimes, including attempted second-degree assault and fourth-degree assault.

On Tuesday, Hummel announced a grand jury had approved an enhanced indictment, including the attempted murder and bias crime charges. Hummel said the indictment would not have been possible if not for recent revisions to Oregon’s hate crime law. Before a law passed last legislative session, felony charges could only be brought if two or more people harmed another person based on the victim’s race, color, religion, sexual orientation, disability or nationality.

It’s the second time this year prosecutors have charged a person under Oregon’s hate crime legislation. Jasmine Renee Campbell, 24, faces charges in Multnomah County Circuit Court for allegedly removing a woman’s hijab and “intentionally desecrating” it.

Lamb is represented by a public defender and is scheduled to be arraigned on the new charges Friday.

The Puris immigrated from India to Central Oregon nearly 50 years ago and have operated the Hub Motel for the past three decades. Before Redmond, they lived in Madras and Warm Springs.

“This is a beautiful community,” Satish Puri said. “We raised our kids here. We have no other place we’ll go. This is a beautiful Central Oregon community. God knows why he did that.”