A customer at the London Sobeys in Ontario, Canada, went on a racist tirade, accusing another shopper of being an illegal alien, threatening to make a citizen’s arrest, and demanding the shopper’s documentation while calling 911. The incident is now being investigated as a possible hate crime. The full video, which was first shared on Facebook by Katie Montoya, is below.
Because Facebook occasionally takes down these video, here is the same video but shared on Twitter:
It’s unclear what — if anything — happened to make the man in the red shirt so irate. According to Montoya, who witnessed the whole thing, the customer in the black hoodie did nothing wrong. The video starts partway into the confrontation, which occurred at a Sobeys grocery store on Adelaide Street on Tuesday, July 17. The man in the black hoodie, who is accused of being an illegal alien, remains calm throughout the confrontation, even when the man in the red shirt won’t let him leave the store. The man in the red shirt is on the phone and calling the police during the confrontation, and the man in the black hoodie calmly says “I want to leave” and “stop assaulting me.”
You can see a Sobeys employee telling someone to call 911. A woman off-camera can be heard saying, “Don’t touch him; why are you touching him?”
Montoya, who was at the Sobeys North London store when the incident happened, took the video and wrote about the situation on Facebook. She said: “At my local Sobey’s , (LONDON ONT. NORTH LONDON STORE) a man accuses the young man of being an ‘illegal alien’ & won’t allow him to leave the store. Continues to push the young man to force him to stay in the store as he has called the police & wants the police to come to the store for the young man (while he has done absolutely nothing) .. he continues to ask if he’s scared to be deported & asked the young man to show his Canadian documentation, & tells him if he leaves the store he will conduct a “citizens arrest” on behalf of the police.
The names of the two people involved in the confrontation have not yet been released.
London police are now investigating whether the incident was a hate crime, CBC reported. Const. George Demopoulos said: “It’s difficult to say whether it was hate motivated, but obviously race did play a part in the incident.” He said that before the video started recording, “there was a previous incident between these two males.” He said when the police responded, they learned that the male in the red shirt had assaulted the man in the black hoodie. No one was injured, and the victim decided not to press charges. Both men left the scene peacefully, Demopoulos said.