A hotdog vendor is speaking out after a viral TikTok showed him being harassed by a group of four women.
In the clip, one woman is heard complaining about the $7 price of a meat stick and threatening to “f–k over” the vendor, before her cohort is seen taking a hotdog off the grill, licking it and placing it back.
The footage, taken outside Viejas Arena at San Diego State University last Saturday, had been watched millions of times, and generated thousands of comments critical of the behavior of the women — who are white, and sympathetic to Hispanic vendor Andrés Argüelles Álvarez.
“They grabbed my bacon with their hand, all my vegetables, everything I use,” Argüelles Álvarez told Noticias Telemundo in Spanish, according to NBC News. “People realized all the dirty things they were doing and it disgusted them. They no longer wanted to buy more.”
“They realized that I was Mexican, that I didn’t speak English very well, and they thought, ‘Ah, we can attack him,’” he reportedly said.
Witness Morgan McBrearty told NBC the women “were already there harassing Andrés” when she approached the cart to buy food.
She said she stepped in to defend him “after I repeatedly heard and saw them talking to him in rude and condescending tones.” The “girls were still continuing to harass” the vendor after she completed her purchase, McBrearty reportedly said.
Meanwhile, the California State University San Marcos student who filmed the clip explained on social media why she chose to record the obnoxious behavior than put an end to it.
“I much rather show how these girls go out in public and act than get myself involved,” said the TikTok user, who goes by @rileykaufman9.
The poster said that Álvarez sells hotdogs in the same spot every weekend and “did nothing to provoke this. It was just the girls coming into it angry and drunk and ready to start something.”
A spokesperson from the college said a current and former student were among the rude women, whose behavior it labeled “disrespectful and antithetical,” according to NBC.
“If applicable, we plan to pursue any violations of our student code of conduct,” the university reportedly said.
Argüelles Álvarez said he believed the women were bullying him because of his limited English language skills.
Telemundo
A street vendor activist had reportedly taken to Instagram to claim the women were students at San Diego State University, prompting the school to issue a statement on the matter Tuesday.
“None of the individuals in the video are confirmed to be SDSU students. Further, while individual names have been shared online, at least one SDSU student and a student organization tagged by social media accounts reported being misidentified and not present in the video, and none of the remaining names shared are SDSU.”
NBC News reported that its own attempts to identify the offending women were unsuccessful.
The incident came amid a rise in robberies against mostly Hispanic street vendors in nearby Los Angeles had soared over the past year, according to NBC Los Angeles.
“Like me, I know that there are thousands of people who live this every day,” Álvarez reportedly said.
