A Hispanic man hired for trash removal is pressing charges against a customer after a viral video showed her throwing boxes at him and his colleagues and telling them to “get out of her country.”
In a series of TikToks posted Thursday, user JC (@jcabuelo) shared an encounter with a white woman he captured on video in which she alleged he and his colleagues were trying to overcharge her by $200 for their services before she called the police on them. She also claimed in the video that the men assaulted her and tried to rape her before she later threw a box at them.
@jcabuelo #karensgoingwild#latinosunidosunidos#racistkaren ♬ original sound – user6309535387171
The three videos, which were labeled with text overlays reading “racist Karen” and “Karen!!! Asking to leave her country,” were viewed a combined more than 8 million times by Monday. In the videos, JC told the woman they were “just trying to do their job,” to which the woman replied, “No you’re not, you told them you wanted 200 extra dollars.”
When JC said, “You didn’t hire me,” the woman told the workers to “get out of my country” before throwing a box at the men and calling them “a fucking liar.” Throughout the incident, JC told the woman that he was recording. She was also holding her phone and appeared to be filming.
JC told the woman, “I’m gonna make you famous.” A neighbor can also be heard on the video speaking to the workers in Spanish and offering support.
In several follow-up videos, JC shared the full story of the incident. He said the company he works for, which can be identified from JC’s shirt as Next Stop Moving and Transport Services, was hired to assist the woman with removing five boxes from her garage.
JC said his company was hired as a third-party by another unidentified company, and prior to the incident, he had no communication with the woman. Based on the agreement between the two companies, JC said if there were more than five boxes as listed in the initial job description, he would be required to take pictures of the additional items so the other company could reevaluate the price.
“The company will reach out to [the customer] and tell them, ‘Oh look, this is how much they’re gonna charge you,’ and then from there they take a percentage and they paid us,” JC said in a video. “We don’t decide how much they’re gonna pay, we don’t have a say on that.”
JC said when he and his colleague showed up to the woman’s house, there were more than five boxes to be removed, contrary to the initial listing. He said they explained to the woman that there would be an upcharge that the company would evaluate based on the actual number of boxes. He said she agreed, and after he sent photos of the items to the company for the new price, they began loading the boxes in their truck.
“I think she thought she was gonna get away of not paying where it’s like, ‘Oh they’re just gonna load them and then I can just not answer the phone,’ or anything like that, but in order for us to leave the property or the area, we had to get the approval—otherwise you have to leave the stuff,” JC said.
JC said after the men loaded the boxes into their truck, they were waiting inside their truck for about 10 minutes to get the new approved price from the company when the woman became aggressive. He said after she knocked on the door of their vehicle and they came out, she began calling them names and said they were lying about the number of items she had.
“I was like, ‘No, the pictures are there, you do have a lot more items than you said on there. There’s a lot more boxes, and they’re all full of trash, so obviously they’re gonna charge you more, but you were aware when we logged that stuff,’” JC said. “But then she was like, ‘No, you told them that you wanted more money.’”
The company allegedly priced the service $200 higher than the initial price for the five boxes, which caused the woman to become hostile, yelling the discriminatory statement and throwing the items as seen in the video.
JC said both he and the woman called the police, and when they arrived, the police made a report of the incident. JC said the officers said the incident is not a hate crime because the men were OK, but after watching the video, they told the men can press assault charges against the woman for throwing items at them.
In the follow-up videos, JC said he chose to press charges against the woman because he doesn’t want her to harm anyone else.
“It’s not just Latinos, it’s everyone out there—the minorities—that we’re out there and we need to stand up for ourselves and we need to ensure that this doesn’t happen again and that this person doesn’t do that with anybody else,” JC said.
JC said he is currently awaiting a court date to move forward in the process to pursue assault charges.
In the comments of the videos, many users offered support for JC.
“Sadly many more go through this, and don’t record it. Thank you for standing up to her,” one user wrote.
Another said, “Great job of staying calm and professional my brother.”
In response to commenters who applauded his composure, JC said he was trying to maintain professionalism.
“I don’t know how I kept myself together because all these feelings I was [feeling], my blood was boiling inside me and it was like, ‘I wanna do something,’ but in the back of my head it was like, ‘There’s so much going on, you have family, you can’t be acting the same way,’” JC said. “But it was a very hard situation.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to JC via TikTok comment and Next Stop Moving and Transport Services via email.
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