A Black man posted video footage to social media of a white woman accusing him of pilfering from his own car. Abdi Kheyre was cleaning out his Ford Fiesta in Bristol, England, when he was approached by the woman.
Kheyre posted the video to Twitter early on the morning of Aug. 22, writing in the caption: “This morning I was in my car cleaning the passenger seat and this white lady came up to me accusing me of being a thief. I’ve lived in this area in Bristol for the past 10 years. I’ve been parking my car here for years now and I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
In the video the woman, dressed in a blue T-shirt and jeans and walking a bicycle, points at Kheyre and says: “It looks like you’re rifling through someone’s glove box!”
“That’s my flipping car!” he responds. “You think I’m robbing my own car ’cause I’m Black?”
Kheyre then tells the woman to call the police, and the woman responds with, “That’s what I might do.”
After the man reads his registration number aloud, the woman begins to retreat, stating that her accusation had nothing to do with race.
As Kheyre grows increasingly agitated, the woman walks away. “I live here!” he shouts.
In a second video posted by Kheyre, the woman comes back to approach him again. Kheyre immediately questions the woman’s return: “Why are you coming back?” he asks. After the woman says she is there to apologize, he tells her he doesn’t want her to.
“You assumed I’m robbing my own car because of my color!” he says. As Kheyre continues to vocalize his frustration, the woman interjects: “If you live around here, we should be mates!” she says.
“Why are you gonna assume I’m robbing my own car because I’m Black?” Kheyre questions. Eventually the woman walks away once more.
Kheyre told The Independent he posted the footage online in order to prevent something like this from happening again.
“So I’m putting this online and talking about it so that this woman doesn’t do this to my siblings or someone else,” he said.
He also replied to critics who claimed he responded too harshly to the woman’s accusation, saying: “How do they expect me to react when someone’s accusing me of something because of my color? How would they even know how that feels? My reaction was definitely justified.”
