On a Thursday, said Hamideh, he was going along Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, New York, when he saw a black man, whom he suspected was mentally ill, approaching a white man dressed in military fatigues and lunging at him. What occurred next was recorded on tape by Hamideh, and the footage instantly went viral.
According to Hamideh, the unidentified black man allegedly spit on the white man’s car and “made disrespectful statements about the military.” The white guy, not pleased with the black man’s statements, punched him in the face with a haymaker punch, knocking him to the ground. As an angry throng assembled, he sat on the black man’s chest to restrain him.
Following the suspect’s fall to the ground, the man in military fatigues is seen sitting on the black man’s chest, waiting for cops to come. As witnesses hurry to the scene, he can be heard begging for passersby to contact authorities. Rather than assisting, they insist that the white guy get off the black man’s chest.
“Get the f*** off of me,” the black guy yells, as at least one onlooker asks wildly if the man in the military fatigues is a “white supremacist.” But, not all watching was willing to make this a matter of skin color.
It’s not about race and not to make it about race, a second observer responds, before saying that the black man had been making issues on the Buffalo street for a long time before he chose to attack the white man. One has no idea what has been going on all day. At the very least, know the facts before one speaks. Back away, one has no business here.
The black guy is heard telling witnesses that he can breathe at one point.
Does this white man strike people? Are you hitting their people? inquires a black guy in a wheelchair who approached the white man as he detained the suspect. He then blames the man of racism while holding a baseball bat, however the soldier is unconvinced.
The white guy acknowledges hitting him before maintaining that it had nothing to do with the other man’s skin color. He sees a man for what he is. He’s ranting and screaming at individuals on the street before approaching his car and spitting on it. Then he turned to face him.
When authorities arrive, the white man instantly quits detaining the black suspect, enabling police to take control and ending the video. It’s unknown whether any arrests were made in relation with the event, but Buffalo Police Department Captain Jeff Rinaldo informed that it was being investigated.
While determining if an event is justifiable without all of the information and solely based on a tiny clip of an interaction is hard, if the witness’s testimony is correct, the man in the military fatigues needs to be thanked. Being spit on exposes the victim to body fluids, which is an attack that should not be accepted in a civilized society. If this individual was bothering and attacking others on the street at random, the military appears to have done the community a favor.
