Since the beginning of this pandemic, we have seen no shortage of racists and otherwise terrible people who put essential workers—who are just trying to do their jobs—through hell, all because they can’t follow simple instructions and put on a damn face mask. One would think at this point, nearly a year and a half into this thing, that these idiots would have given up their nonsensical rebellion against mask mandates, but unfortunately, they’re hard-headed, and the workers are having to pay the cost of their stubbornness.
A man from Weehawken, N.J., has been arrested on assault and disorderly conduct charges after he was caught on camera verbally attacking a New Jersey Transit conductor who did nothing more than ask him to put on the mask he already had hanging from his ear. The man is alleged to have physically attacked the conductor as well. The conductor is Black, so, of course, there were racial slurs involved—because all it usually takes is a little aggravation for bigots to explicitly identify themselves.
According to NJ.com, 30-year-old Thomas Vitulano has been charged with third and fourth-degree aggravated assault on a transit supervisor, interfering with public transportation and disorderly conduct and was taken to the Bergen County Jail Thursday.
From NJ.com:
The incident occurred on Monday when the conductor, who is Black, asked Vitulano to put on his face mask, according to Kore James, of Paterson, who recorded the video.
Face masks are required on public transit as part of regulations that were set in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
“He said, ‘Sir, can you please put on your mask?’” James told NJ Advance Media on Thursday. “It was almost an immediate confrontation.”
James, a landscape architect, said he started recording because the exchange “had become very loud and because in the day we live in, everything should be recorded.”
“(Vitulano) was saying all kinds of homophobic slurs, racist slurs,” James said. “He was all over the place.”
The video, which appears to have been taken down from YouTube, reportedly shows Vitulano shouting at the conductor and calling him a nigger and other names multiple times. James said he stopped recording after things got physical so he could restrain the rabid racist who he said was on the attack.
“I heard sneakers screeching against the floor,” James said. “The guy had pushed the conductor into the corner [and] the conductor was in a bad spot. He didn’t have any room to move.”
James said he rushed over and “grabbed him, restrained him, brought him to the ground and then stayed on top of him while I called the police.”
Vitulano’s mother spoke with ABC 7 about the incident, and unsurprisingly, she blamed her son’s behavior on mental illness, because for some reason, a lot of people appear to think there exists a mental condition that causes racial slurs to fly out of the mouths of normally non-racist people.
“You know, this whole thing about Black and white and this and that, my son talks that because he lives down in Weehawken. We are not biased against anybody,” she said. “Nothing was mentioned about my son’s serious mental illness and he was not on his medication, but yet everything else to incriminate my son is being put online.”
Sooooo, listen—I’ve never been to Weehawken, N.J., before. Maybe there’s something in the water there that causes a rare mental disorder no one has ever heard of called “anti-negrosis,” and symptoms include an aversion to face masks and yielding to a Black person’s authority. But it sounds to me like Vitulano’s mother is no stranger to her son’s racist outbursts.
Still, she insisted her son is “not a thug, and we’re not prejudiced here either.”
It’s almost as if she’s defending her son by telling on herself. I just have a hard time imagining she keeps an n-word-free house, is all I’m saying.