Washington: Police in Plano, Texas, arrested a Mexican-American woman on charges of assault and “terroristic threats” after she allegedly attacked four Indian women in a parking lot as they came out of a restaurant. The incident was captured on videos that have since gone viral.
Authorities said the woman, identified as Esmeralda Upton, is also being investigated for hate crime, and additional charges may be forthcoming. She is being held on a bond of $10,000, police said, releasing what they described as “jail photo”.
The assault took place in Plano, a Dallas suburb with a sizeable Indian population, when the four Indian women left a restaurant and were heading towards their cars in a largely empty parking lot.
They are accosted by Upton, who launched into a racist rant saying “We don’t want you here. . . . Go back to India. ” “You curry-assed people are ruining this country,” she rages. When the Indian women ask her why she did she walk up too them to talk uninvited, she rages, “Because I hate you f***ing Indians, that’s why. ” As the bewildered Indian women recover and ask her how she could be talking like that when she herself is a Latina, the woman says, “I’m Mexican-American. I speak English,” the irony totally lost on her.
By this time the Indian women have been recording the exchange on their cell phones, agitating Upton, who strikes out repeatedly at the women in an effort to grab the phones. At one point she threatens them with dire consequences and dips her hand into a large handbag seeming to reach for a weapon. Amid much panic, one of the Indian women reaches 911 and relates the ongoing incident to the police, beseeching them to rush to the spot. One of the women tells the police they are being attacked by a white woman in a black dress.
Towards the end of the five minute video, Upton, probably having realised she is in trouble, says she has overreacted, tries to make amends, and offers a handshake, but she is rebuffed. Police arrested her nearly 20 hours after the incident as clips of the attack went viral, causing many people online to ask why she was not arrested on the spot and why the cops gave her so much time.
Many people of Mexican and Latino heritage condemned the attack and said the incident was not representative of how the community thought or felt about immigrants, considering they themselves constitute the largest group of immigrants in the US. For the Indian women, the shock was severe enough to share on social media. “I have lived in DFW (Dallas Fort Worth area) for 29 years and never have I felt so humiliated, threatened, and scared for my life,” she added in an update.
