Teens Visiting Vancouver Were Apparently Assaulted For Not Speaking English (VIDEO)
A group of teenagers visiting Canada had a horrifying welcome while onboard public transit. A group of Brazilian teenagers were assaulted on a Vancouver bus, and it's reportedly all because they weren't speaking English. Many people are horrified that something like this would happen.
Lauren Boothby, Web Editor and Reporter for NEWS 1130, was a witness to this encounter. She posted photos and videos of the incident on her Twitter on Monday evening, and explained what had happened in a series of tweets.
"I just witnessed a racist assault by this woman on a teenage girl who was visiting Canada from Portugal. She smashed her backpack into the teen’s face as she was getting off the bus. She did it because she wasn’t speaking English," she wrote in the first tweet.
According to Boothby, the woman was angry at the teenagers, who were visiting from Brazil, because they were speaking Portugese.
"The five teens — 15 and 17 years old — were really shaken up after the attack. They were crying, saying they felt afraid and angry," tweeted Boothby.
Boothby also shared a video of the attack on her Twitter, which has since gone viral with 33,000 views. The first tweet in the series has over 800 retweets and hundreds of comments.
Here is video I took of the attack. Again this was intentional and aggressive because she told her friend she was g… https://t.co/zesvIvPsum— Lauren Boothby (@Lauren Boothby) 1563763772.0
Several Twitter users were outraged by the incident, and took to the platform to share their thoughts.
@laurby @NEWS1130 How on earth would anyone be triggered by a different language on public transit in the GVRD or e… https://t.co/bZL0mDCLEP— Jessica Peters (@Jessica Peters) 1563770980.0
@laurby @NEWS1130 Good for you for standing up for these victims by capturing this video and sharing the story via… https://t.co/2q5phtLkGM— Anna Vlachos (@Anna Vlachos) 1563793962.0
The incident left the Brazilian teenagers shocked and horrified. 17-year-old Alessandra Ribeiro was the victim of the backpack strike depicted in the video. She told Boothby that the woman called her and her friends "snarky" and "disrespectful", because they were talking to each other in Portugese, according to NEWS 1130.
“She used it as an excuse, I think, to cover for the fact that she was bothered that we were speaking Portuguese,” Ribeiro told Boothby, NEWS 1130 reports. “I feel very humiliated and awful. I also feel like crying but I won’t".
The Transit Police are now investigating. However, Sgt. Clint Hampton has told CTV News that the victim will be returning back to Brazil soon, and she is not looking to come back to Canada in order to testify in court.
