Authorities claim a lady was recorded on camera physically and verbally attacking a group of South Asian-American ladies in a Plano, Texas, parking lot on Wednesday night. She has since been detained. A probable hate crime is being investigated in connection with the event.
According to the Plano Police Department, Esmeralda Upton was detained on Thursday and charged with misdemeanor assault and making a terroristic threat. After posting a $10,000 bond, she was later released from custody, Plano police spokeswoman Andrae Smith told CBS News.
The police-identified woman, identified as Upton, is shown in the video cursing, ranting about racism, punching someone, and threatening to shoot one of the victims. The video has received thousands of views on social media.
Upton can be heard screaming in the video at one point, “Go back to India.”
Charges of a hate crime have not yet been brought. However, according to Texas law, the event is a “hate crime,” according to Plano police, and it may possibly result in federal prosecution.
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the FBI are cooperating closely on this matter, according to the department.
The reason why Upton was not detained at the scene, according to Plano police, is that “the criminal offenses did not occur in the presence of the responding patrol officers.”
In addition to posting the incident’s footage to Facebook, Rani Banerjee, one of the four ladies who were the targets of the racist attack, revealed herself to CBS News on Thursday. Banerjee told WFAA-TV in Dallas that Upton approached her and her companions in the parking lot after they had just finished eating at Sixty Vines.
Banerjee told WFAA, “All of a sudden, we heard this woman yelling at us, and she started walking at us.” The racial remarks that she employed stunned us.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ executive director for Texas, Faizan Syed, denounced the bigoted attack.
In an interview with WFAA, Syed stated, “The degree of hostility and alleged physical abuse against four Indian-American ladies in Plano is just disgusting. We urge law enforcement to look into the incident as a possible hate crime because “this kind of hatred has no place in North Texas.”
In the US, hate crimes against Asians are on the rise. Between March 2020 and March 2022, there were about 11,500 documented hate crimes against Asians, according to a research by Stop AAPI Hate. Inappropriate gestures, written hate speech, or verbal harassment accounted for two thirds of all cases.
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