A Man Starts Harrazing a woman. for Speaking Spanish in a Super Market but Another Woman Comes to the Rescue
In a viral video posted on Facebook, a woman who has been identified as Kamira Trent can be seen yelling at the suspect, identified as Linda Dwire, at a City Market grocery store in Rifle, Colorado, on Monday. Dwire has been accused of harassing Fabiola Velasquez and Isabel Marin for speaking Spanish to one another.
"I'm calling the cops. You leave these women alone! Get out!" Trent can be heard telling Dwire in the video.
"You come from a generation that's destroying this country," Dwire responded.
"No I do not. I have respect. You do not harass people," Trent can be heard telling Dwire in the video.
"No I do not. I have respect. You do not harass people," Trent can be heard telling Dwire in the video.
"You will lose your country," Dwire told Trent as she points her finger at her. "You know what, you will lose this country."
Trent and Dwire can be seen walking away in the video as a store employee can be seen following the women.
"You do not harass Hispanic women!" Trent can be heard saying.
The video has already garnered over 778,000 views and over 13,000 shares on Facebook. Velasquez wrote on Facebook that she never thought this would happen to her and thanked Trent for sticking up for her and Marin.
“I never thought this would happen to me. A friend and I were talking in the store in Spanish and suddenly a lady came to insult us that if we lived in this country, we had to speak only English. Thankfully the other girl (who we do not know) defended us and called the police," Velasquez wrote in Spanish on Facebook on Monday. “I always saw videos on social media and it infuriated me and today, when it was my case, I can say that I felt a real helplessness.”
Velasquez told BuzzFeed News she has been in the U.S. for eight years and was at the market with her children. She was speaking to Marin when she was approached by Dwire, who was aggressive and put her hands to her face, according to BuzzFeed News. Trent overheard Dwire tell the women “You're in America. You're in my country. You can't speak Spanish here. You need to speak English if you're going to be in America."
“She just got angrier and angrier. I was trying to get her away from the two women, but she wasn't going to leave them alone," Trent told BuzzFeed News. "What she said and the way she said it was wrong."
Dwire was arrested and taken to Garfield County Jail, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by BuzzFeed News. She was charged with two counts of bias-motivated harassment but was released on bond on Monday.
Newsweek has reached out to City Market for comment on the incident but did not hear back in time for publication.
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