SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – An Uber driver in San Francisco was attacked and coughed up by a woman who was driving with two other women after denying them service for not wearing masks in an attack the driver captured on video.
San Francisco police also said one of the women sprayed what is believed to be pepper spray into the vehicle and towards the driver after exiting the vehicle. The incident happened on Sunday at approximately 12:45 PM in San Bruno Ave. and Silver Ave.
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The video was shot on Sunday by the driver, identified as 32-year-old Subhakar Khadka. In it, three women in the backseat are seen berating the driver with profanity. At one point, the woman coughing on the driver also grabbed his cell phone from the center of the dashboard and ripped off the face mask he was wearing.
Warning: disturbing video, explicit language (Source: Subhakar Khadka)
The driver said he had stopped to tell the women to wear face masks and the driver told the women to get out of his car. The video begins with a woman saying to the driver, “F – the masks!” and then cough at him repeatedly.
Khadka says he believes he was harassed and mocked by the unruly passengers for being a South Asian immigrant.
“I never said anything bad to them, I never cursed, I was not raised that way. I don’t touch people, I wasn’t raised that way, so they didn’t get out of my car, ”said Khadka.
Khadka said his nightmare started on Sunday afternoon. He picked up the three women at the Bayview on San Bruno Avenue. When he noticed that a woman was not wearing a mask, he said he had asked her to put one on. He drove to a nearby gas station so she could buy one. But by then, he says, the racial insults and harassment had already begun.
“You are animals to treat other people like that,” he told KPIX 5.
And that was not the worst. He says that after they eventually got out of the car, he says the woman in red pepper sprayed him.
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“She sprayed pepper in my car, from the passenger window that was slightly open, that was the only open window in my car,” he said.
Khadka says he had to get out of his car because it became difficult to breathe.
He says he came to the US eight years ago and is working hard to support his family in Nepal. He says he was targeted because of his race.
“If I were a different skin color, I wouldn’t have gotten that treatment from them,” he said. “The moment I opened my mouth to speak, they realized I was one of them, so it’s easy for them to intimidate me.”
His message to the women is, “Don’t think the other is any less human since you were born and raised here in the United States.”
The driver said Uber gave him $ 120 in cleaning money after multiple requests, which is still not enough.
Uber confirmed the incident and said in an email to KPIX 5, “The behavior seen in the video is terrible. The driver no longer has access to Uber. “
San Francisco police said the driver was able to get his phone back from the woman and the three women fled after the attack.
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Anyone with information about the incident was asked to call the SFPD tip line at 1-415-575-4444 or send a text message to TIP411 and start the text message with SFPD.