A man has been fired from his job after blocking a Latino resident from entering an apartment parking garage in San Francisco, then assaulting a bystander who tried to intervene, in an incident caught on video.
Watch it in two parts:
ABC 7 reports: Michael Barajas, a Berkeley graduate and community educator for a biopharmaceutical company, says he used his remote to open the garage door to the SOMA Residences where he lives on Tuesday evening after coming home from buying fruit. A white SUV with Florida plates pulled in ahead of him and, instead of proceeding forward, stopped at the entrance of one of the building’s garages and stopped Michael from going inside. “His immediate reaction was ‘hey you f**king criminal, you’re not coming in here.'” Michael says he was clad in black and his tattoos were showing. He thinks perhaps when he leaned his head out of the window to see what was the matter, the driver and passenger, identified as William Beasley, decided he was a threat based off of his appearance.
More from KRON-TV: The Hispanic man repeated several times that he did live there and was just trying to get into the garage and park. But the white man still said he called the cops. “If you have a key card you can get in yourself, you’re not coming in the f–king garage,” he said. “I called the cops so you got about five minutes to get out of here.” “That’s fine. Call the cops,” the Hispanic man responded. “What’re you calling the cops about, Karen?” A second video posted to Twitter shows the altercation turn physical. The white man got out of his car and allegedly started beating another man who was defending the Hispanic man.
ABC 7 reports that APEX Systems, where Beasley was employed, issued a statement saying they conducted an internal review and “made the decision to terminate the employee” and that they will not “tolerate violent or racist behavior.”
“I’ve always been from a really poor, poor immigrant family, so I think what happened just struck very hard for me. I felt, for me, that I do not belong here,” Barajas told the station. “Had that happened to someone who is undocumented and didn’t know how to handle the situation and had been violent in return, what would’ve happened?”
Watch ABC 7’s report below.
