Nick Dunn is a 22-year-old California man who was caught on video using racist and homophobic slurs toward a Hispanic man at a Popeyes restaurant in Escondido, California. He has since apologized and claimed in a now-deleted video posted to YouTube that he is not racist. Father and son James Bobek and Jimmy Bobek, have been identified as the other two men in the video, which was posted on social media on January 29, 2021, and went viral.
Heavy has reached out to Dunn and the Bobeks for comment. The man who was the target of the slurs and who recorded the video posted it to Twitter using the name JON400 and the handle “@jonpeace67.” He wrote, “this is the type of trash we have in Escondido, and Trump helped expose. Pathetic.”
The incident occurred at the Popeyes at 1541 East Valley Parkway in Escondido, on January 29 about 11 p.m. It was not immediately clear if the Escondido Police responded to the incident or if it is under investigation. A police department spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment from Heavy.
Here’s what you need to know about Nick Dunn and the Escondido, California, Popeyes incident caught on video:
Dunn Tells the Hispanic Man to ‘Go Back to Where You F***** Came From’ & Tells the Man Recording to ‘Send It to the News, I Dare You’
In the video, Dunn can be seen holding his phone out and also recording the incident. He then gets into the Hispanic man’s face and yells, “go back to where you f***** came from.” The man Dunn was with, James Bobek, then can be seen on video smacking the phone of the man recording and calling him “n*****.” The man recording then tells Bobek to say that one more time, and Bobek mockingly replies, “one more time.”
As the man recording the video pans down to get the license plate of the Cadillac Escalade that Dunn and the Bobeks were in, Dunn and the elder Bobek jump in front of the man and his phone to try to block him from being able to see it. Dunn then says, “real big man we got here” and says to the man, “send it to the news, I dare you,” while continuing to also record him and getting in his face.
The man recording says about Dunn and the Bobeks, “they left Popeyes and they said f***the n-word who works at Popeyes.” Dunn the makes a face and says, “oh my God the n-word,” as James Bobek says, “n*****” multiple times and calls the man recording a “beanboy,” a slur against Hispanic people. Dunn then says, “beanbag, go back. You’ve got nothing to say” and Bobek says, “next time keep your f***** mouth shut.”
Toward the end of the video, Dunn directs a homophobic slur to the man recording while talking about his car, saying, “nice spoiler f*****.”
Dunn Gave an Interview to a Local Los Angeles News Station on January 20, Saying ‘I Don’t Think I Should Be Forced to Wear a Mask Because This Is America, Not China’
Dunn recently gave an interview to Los Angeles news station KCAL about anti-maskers who had rallied against President Joe Biden, Governor Gavin Newsome and mask mandates. Dunn was wearing the same red plaid shirt during the interview. The interview can be seen at the 1:18 mark of the video above.
“Joe Biden,” Dunn said to the reporter. “That’s not the president.” The reporter said Dunn told her he doesn’t agree with anything the Democrats are pushing. “As an American, I don’t think I should be forced to wear a mask, because this America, not China.”
In the video, Dunn is listed as a Huntington Beach, California, resident.
In His Apology Video, Dunn Said ‘I Really am Sorry for My Language in the Video & I Did Not Mean to Offend Anyone’ Said He Is an ‘Eagle Scout … So I Do Care About This Country & Everything’
Dunn posted an apology on YouTube on January 30, and later deleted it, but copies of the video have been reposted. The original video was posted to YouTube by “Nick D” and was titled, “nick dunn huntington beach pope eyes response.”
In the apology video, Dunn says he is the Nick Dunn from the Popeyes viral video. “The story goes we were in a car full of kids, one minor, and this guy in a blue truck starting yelling at us because we were taking to long, he said ‘hurry the f*** up.’ And when the restaurant slow to complete our order, it took maybe 10 minutes in full because we wanted to make sure we had everything, the guy started to yell,” Dunn said in the video. According to Dunn, the “minor in the back” of the Escalade yelled back at the man, “shut the f*** up” and an altercation began.
Dunn said the man was antagonizing them and then pulled behind them when they parked to eat. Dunn said he and the others were being “really aggressive” and were in “fight or flight mode.” Dunn said, “I’m truly, truly, truly sorry for the way that I behaved. I’m not really like that. I’m not racist or anything. I don’t hate people based on the color of their skin. It’s not my deal. This guy was trying to get us to do this. In the moment my adrenaline was sky high and I was in like a fight or flight mode.”
Dunn added, “I really am sorry for my language in the video and I did not mean to offend anyone. It was just an altercation between two people, but they just had different skin colors. I’m not a racist, I really am not, and I’m actually an Eagle Scout, so I’m f*****, you know, I do care about this country and everything and I’ve had like a bad week. It just got to the point where this guy came up to us and was talking some s***.” He added:
I hope you all can find it in your hearts to forgive me. It was a huge mistake doing that. I should have stayed in the
car and just filmed from the car, but I decided to get out, for whatever reason, but I really regret it. I hope you can accept my apology, that’s what this is. If you can find it in your heart to not hate me and, kind of like, just you know, forgive me, that would be awesome.
I am unhappy with my behavior, but it was the result of being repeatedly antagonized. So I hope you can see both sides of the story and just try to realize that we were being antagonized by this man and now we’re painted as bad guys, but we’re really not. We’re good people at heart. We were kind of just messing around that night and it didn’t end well, let me tell you that. … I’m not a white supremacist. I do not think white people are the master race per se, or whatever, I don’t even know. I’m only 22, I’m still trying to figure this out just like the rest of you.
Dunn added, “This has really been the worst experience of my life. I think if people really thought about like what it would be like to be a Trump supporter, you know, like we’re not racist. We wanted to see this country build back up to the way that it was. And you know, with Joe, we’re just going to have to see what happens.”
The man who posted the video to Twitter also posted his side of the story.
He tweeted, “They went to the drive thru at Popeyes, I was behind them, as they left they screamed ‘fuck the n***** that works at popeyes’ because they didn’t have any more barbecue sauce and then I approached them for saying that s*** to my brother. There is usually two sides to the story…But not with these f***** racists you f****.”
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