The woman on the receiving end of a barrage of racist insults in a California parking lot has broken her silence.
The horrifying incident occurred in the community of Pinole, just northeast of San Francisco. A viral clip showed a woman repeatedly directing a racial slur at another woman in a parking lot on Sunday morning.
The victim is now speaking out.
“It's quite unfortunate the verbiage she was using. It's unacceptable,” she told KTVU under the conditions of anonymity. “I don't understand why she was using it towards anybody in public at all. She's obviously not supposed to be using that type of vulgar language.”
In the clip, the perpetrator repeatedly used the N-word and mocked the victim’s “fake a** eyelashes” while urging her to “get out of my face.” The person recording the video is a relative of the victim.
Officers of the Pinole Police Department responded to reports of a fight outside the Pear Street Bistro on San Pablo Avenue.
The woman, who has not been identified, hurled the racial abuse while sitting in a blue Toyota Camry with California license plates.
The video has gone viral on social media in recent days, garnering more than 43 million views on one X post alone.
Police confirmed to local TV station KRON4 that they contacted three people at the scene, two of whom were involved in an argument.
The two individuals were separated, and the incident was deemed a verbal altercation.
“Due to the nature of the verbal exchange between the parties, the incident has been classified as a hate incident, not a hate crime,” police said.
The case had been shared with the Contra Costa County District Attorney's office for review, according to Pinole Mayor Cameron Sasai.
The woman who used the racial slurs allegedly has a pending criminal case, charged with repeatedly stealing from a beauty store in Concord.
The mother of the woman now under investigation told the news station she has been crying constantly after learning about the video.
Pear Street Bistro owner, Francisco Flores, told NBC Bay Area that a bartender working on Sunday saw the woman at the bar by herself. She ate food but did not drink alcohol, he said.
Police arrived about 10 minutes after the woman exited the restaurant, according to the bartender.
Social media users, residents, and local officials have sharply criticized the woman’s behavior.
“Regardless of the context, those words, those racial slurs, that racist, anti-Black rhetoric, is not acceptable,” Mayor Sasai told the news station, adding he was “incredibly disturbed” by the exchange.
Felicia Carr, of neighboring Fairfield, reportedly helped identify the woman by posting the video on her social media.
“With the tensions that's going on and racism at an all-time high right now, it was just so much racism and blatant disrespect, it was sad to see,” she said.
