Metro Vancouver Transit Police is now investigating the case of a viral video showing a racist 75-year-old Westminster woman verbally abusing an elderly couple from the Philippines on the SkyTrain.
The incident happened on the Millennium Line on Aug. 21 between the stations Sperling/Burnaby Lake and Brentwood Town Centre in Vancouver, Canada, The Georgia Straight reported. The authorities have now launched an investigation after a review of the video “determined that the aggressor in this situation had used profane and racially slanted language toward the elderly couple.”
The racial tirade of the woman began after hearing the elderly Filipino couple speaking Tagalog.
According to Paula Correa, the witness who managed to catch some of the incident on video, the racist woman interrupted the elderly couple’s conversation after hearing them speak in Tagalog and told them to be quiet, Global News reported.
The tirade eventually led the unnamed woman to telling the Filipino couple to, “go back to the f—ing Philippines,” and further telling them, “If you decide to live in this country, you should learn how to speak English.”
Interestingly enough, most Filipinos are actually bilingual. English is one of the two commonly used and official language in the Philippines alongside the country’s national dialect, Tagalog.
“We speak both English and Tagalog or whatever dialect we speak. It’s ridiculous how ignorant people are. The couple was replying to [her] perfectly well in English,” Correa said.
Many people joined in to defend the elderly couple. One man tried to defend them but the racist woman switched her aggression towards him and assaulted him verbally as well.
The woman cursed at the couple right before leaving the train, Correa said. And some people even heard her yelling after the door closed.
The unnamed woman, according to the news released by the authorities, is known to the police for having anger-related issues. Read more at NextShark
