San Francisco police are investigating an incident captured in a now viral video that shows an Uber driver being assaulted after refusing the service of three passengers because one of the three was allegedly not wearing a mask.
The Uber driver picked up three women on Sunday afternoon on Avenida San Bruno and Rua Felton, near the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco, when one of the three individuals was not wearing a face cover, police said.
The driver, identified as 32-year-old Subhakar Khadka by KPIX, stopped at a gas station so that the passenger could buy a face mask, the post said.
The video shows a woman coughing over the driver, verbally assaulting him, trying to grab his phone and then pulling his mask off his face. The woman, who posted more videos of the incident on Instagram, said Khadka tried to leave them in the middle of what appears to be a highway.
Subhakar told the station that he believes he was attacked for being an immigrant from South Asia.
The incident has taken place amid a wave of xenophobia and violence against Asian Americans and the Pacific Islands in the bay area and across the country since the pandemic began. Cyan Banister, one of the first investors in Uber, created a GoFundMe with the goal of raising $ 20,000 to help Subhakar.
In a statement, an Uber spokesman called the video “terrible”. Both Uber and Lyft suspended the passenger seen coughing on the Subhakar.
“Although this incident did not involve the Lyft platform, the driver’s unacceptable treatment in this video forced us to permanently remove the pilot from the Lyft community,” Lyft said on Twitter.
“If I had been another complexion, I would not have received this treatment from them,” said Khadka. “The moment I opened my mouth to speak, they realized that I am among them, so it is easy for them to intimidate me.”
Police said one of the passengers allegedly threw what was believed to be pepper spray in the car after the group got out of the car. Kkadka told KPIX that he got out of the vehicle because he couldn’t breathe.
The woman who coughed in Khadka spoke about the incident on Tuesday in an Instagram Live video saying “it has nothing against Asians”
“I had something against this … man telling me to go out with my $ 50,000 watch in the middle of [nowhere]”, She said, adding that she had asked for another driver before he supposedly left the gas station.
She also said that coughing at him was not “right” and that she was concerned for his safety.
Jessica Flores is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @jesssmflores