Aditya Asastry and his two friends went for pizza after a Saturday evening out. That's when a woman approached them with a racist tirade that left them terrified.
“My friend, who’s American but of Puerto Rican descent, was the first one she targeted. And myself and my other friend kind of distanced ourselves, like, 'hey let’s not do this tonight.' And she followed us down and continued to escalate things and became more and more agitated and she started calling me things like terrorist,” Aditya told Q13 Fox.
For his own protection, Asastry pulled out his cell phone camera and began recording. The woman then slapped the camera out of his hand, breaking the phone.
While they tried to walk around the corner to get away from the woman, but they were already terrified.
“When I went home it was much more painful to kind of process the things that were being said. The things about 'get out of my country' and the more divisive rhetoric that was said was really what gets to me,” he explained.
Aditya called the police, who are currently investigating the alleged assault.
The incident came just days after another in Auburn, Washington where a 26-year-old man was beaten with a baseball bat due to the color of his skin.
In November, another incident was caught on video of a man harassing a group of Latino construction workers. In that case Casey Schmidt was charged with malicious harassment.
“I think the content is very important because you see these things and you think that happens somewhere else. And I’ve said it to myself many times, however, that’s not the case. This happens everywhere,” says Aditya.
Watch the full video from Asastry below:
