San Angelo Woman Racially Attacked While Driving Down W 29th St

SAN ANGELO, TEXAS -- Yesterday, a local San Angelo woman uploaded a 30-second video to her personal Facebook page, which has since gone viral. In this video, the woman was racially profiled for being of Mexican heritage. The video shows the woman in her personal vehicle, who at the time of the incident was driving with her infant child. LIVE! reached out to the victim to hear her story.

The woman, a San Angelo resident, was driving down W 29th early Wednesday morning, then came to a stop at the red light at the Highway 87 intersection. A few seconds later, a white truck with two men in it pulled up next to her. The male passenger of the white truck, an older man, then started yelling various racial slurs at her.

“I stopped at the stoplight, then [the older man] and the driver pulled up next to me a little bit after,” she explained. “He was yelling at me.”

At first she thought he was trying to get her attention; however, after rolling down her window she realized that this was going to be far more aggressive.

“I rolled down my window and he said ‘oh you’re Mexican’, and just started saying all these really horrible and nasty things,” she remembered.

After recording the altercation on her phone, the suspects drove off while saying more vulgar comments.

DISCLAIMER: RAW VIDEO: Offensive Language.

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“At first I just wanted to record the guy, in case anything escalated, and if he decided to get out the [truck] and try to beat my car or me up,” the young woman explained. The woman has now decided to file a report with the San Angelo Police Department (SAPD).

In the video, the driver of the truck is out of sight. The woman was not able to see the driver as her car sat lower than the white truck.

“The driver didn't try to stop [the man], or roll up [the truck's] window,” she added.

Tracy Gonzalez, Public Information Officer for the SAPD, advised LIVE! to share the following information with its readers, so the readers know what to do if they ever feel threatened by another person. 

It’s important to get the suspect's license plate and vehicle model, character description, and any pictures, audio or video of the incident, Gonzalez explained.

The biggest question that needs to be addressed is, which events led up to the incident?  In this particular instance, “Was there more that happened that was not recorded on the video? Was there some other exchange that happened prior to the girl grabbing her cell phone?” Gonzalez said.

These important questions are applicable to any situation regarding a verbal confrontation. 

“What [SAPD] would encourage people to do is if [they] feel threatened by another person’s actions, words, or behavior, we as law enforcement have to have something to go by [in order to respond],” Gonzalez explained.

Providing a description of the suspect through a video or picture, can be very beneficial to the police investigation.

Also, the feeling of being threatened can vary from victim to victim, Gonzalez pointed out.

In some instances, the victim may not feel threatened at all. However, others may feel terrified and not know to what lengths the suspect may go to hurt them.  

“It’s really left up to the person going through the experience,” Gonzalez added.  “If they feel threatened it’s important to safely document what [happened].”

In the case of the terrorized young woman yesterday, she remained calm and refrained from yelling back at the suspect. She instead recorded the incident so that there would be no question of what was said and by whom it was said.

“We have to work together to combat this type of behavior and make it absolutely not tolerable,” Gonzalez said. “I’m happy [the woman] remained calm and did not engage the suspect in the video. I give her credit for being the better person and remaining calm.”

Additionally, Gonzalez stressed that these instances are notorious for invoking a lot of anger in a person; because there were vehicles involved it could have escalated into a road rage situation if it had not been handled judiciously.  

Despite the upsetting ordeal, the young San Angelo woman hopes that this video also serves an educational purpose, "obviously you can’t stop this everywhere, but hopefully people will be aware that [racism] is still going on,” and she hopes that her video will help in preventing future incidents of this kind, concluding our interview with, “Hopefully, this doesn't happen again!"