MAGA social media trolls arrested after allegedly setting Black woman's boots on fire in NYC hate crime
Published in News & Features
NEW YORK — A pair of social media trolls — including one who sports a “Make America Great Again” red hat — have been arrested for trying to light a Black woman’s boots on fire during a clash on a Manhattan street filled with racist insults, police said Thursday.
The duo, known online as “ScrubsNYC,” were nabbed late Wednesday, just a few hours after police released their images and asked the public’s help tracking them down. They were wanted for a bizarre hate crime on West 26th Street and Seventh Avenue in Chelsea on Feb. 19.
Michael Santiago, 31, and Michael James, 33, were hit with a slew of charges including attempted assault, criminal mischief and menacing, all as hate crimes, as well as aggravated harassment, arson and criminal tampering. The two suspects live in the same apartment building on the Upper East Side, according to police.
The two approached the 54-year-old victim about 2:50 p.m. and were chatting her up when the provacateur in the MAGA hat began spewing a racist tirade that was caught on camera and posted online.
“I want to f— you right up your n—– a–,” the man in the MAGA hat screamed. “I want to f— a slave. You’re my slave. You’re my slave.”
The woman casually pulled out her own phone and began recording the men, throwing insults right back at them.
“Of course you do,” she said of their comments about bedding her. “I could never ’cause you’re a slave — you’re a slave to my Blackness.”
The suspect told the woman, “kiss me,” and she replied saying she “would never.”
“That’s your bitch, not me,” the woman said casually, motioning to the camera man recording the entire exchange.
At one point, one of the provacateurs asked to kiss the victim’s pair of boots. She agreed, but when he knelt down he set one of her boots on fire with a hand-held blowtorch.
The hair on the boots were singed but the flames quickly petered out, the video shows. Cops say the $89 pair of boots were ruined.
The woman didn’t appear to notice as she continued to trade insults with the creep.
“I just burned your boot,” the provocateur said.
“Of course you did,” the victim replied.
“I want to impregnate you, let’s f—,” the MAGA hat sporting suspect said.
“Of course you want to impregnate me and contaminate my race,” she replied. “Your mother’s a f——.”
The victim reported the incident to police after she realized her boots were damaged. She also gave cops images of the two suspects from her recording of the bizarre exchange.
ScrubsNYC boasts about being the “biggest streamers in New York right now” in one of their online videos.
One video shows the pair lying in traffic and angering strangers with their bizarre rants.
“Yeah, right here bro! Do something!” one angered resident screams at them on the sidewalk in one clip. “Do something! Then don’t f—ing run your mouth! Get the f— out of here!”
Many of the videos show the MAGA hat-wearing provocateur being forced to leave an apartment building or a bodega. In one quick clip, a bodega patron throws a drink at him. In another, a woman knocks the red hat off his head.
“They tell you that the city never sleeps,” ScrubsNYC wrote in the opening of one video. “But they don’t tell you about the ones who keep it awake.”
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