A woman on a United Airlines shuttle bus yelled racist things at an Indian American family, calling them “not American.” The family is going to file charges against the woman.
A woman approached Pervez Taufiq, 50, while he was going from Mexico to Los Angeles with his wife and three young children. She told his children to “shut up” and then used racial slurs when he pushed back. The video that Taufiq took of what happened on November 23 has become popular on social media, making a lot of people very angry at the attacker.
Taufiq told NBC News, “What was most disappointing is that there’s no level of blame or remorse.”
Taufiq didn’t call the police at first, but he said that the attacker’s name was given to him, and he now plans to file charges.
Fox 11 in Los Angeles interviewed the woman on Tuesday, and she admitted to the crime and said that Taufiq and his wife had made her angry. The news source asked not to use her name.
He said that Taufiq feels bad for her, but based on her answers, he doesn’t think she is sorry. He is going to start the process of filing charges against her because he wants it to be clear that what she did was wrong, he said. It’s not clear if the woman will be charged with a crime.
The harassment started on the trip from Mexico, when she went up to his 11-year-old son, who was sitting alone, and asked him about his race. A video shows her giving the family the stink eye and calling them “tandoori” and “stinky” while on the shuttle bus from the plane to Los Angeles International Airport.
“You don’t respect people who are different from you, and you don’t follow the rules,” she said in the video. After calling him “tandoori” in a rude way, she grabbed her phone and said she was going to record.
The woman told Fox 11 that her behavior was because she had a brain accident in the past.
She said, “Most people know me as a kind and calm person, but since the brain injury I get angry very quickly.”
She also said that Taufiq had used a bad word for white people to insult her first.
Taufiq says he didn’t say anything mean, but he did tell her to quiet down after she yelled at his 4-year-old son.
He said, “The only thing I don’t want my kids to do is see their dad lay down.”
