A Texas Woman Was Arrested For A Racist Attack On A Group Of Indian American Women That They Caught On Video

In video of the incident, Esmeralda Upton can be seen verbally and physically attacking the women, and at one point threatening to shoot one of them.

A woman in Texas has been arrested for her racist attack on a group of Indian American women, which they captured in disturbing videos that have since gone viral.

In videos of the Wednesday night incident, the woman — who police have identified as Esmeralda Upton — is seen harassing the group of women in a parking lot in Plano, Texas. When one of the women asks why she approached them, she responds with a racist tirade.

"Because I hate you fucking Indians, that's why!" Upton says.

Her hate-filled rant continues from there, including comments that "you Indians are fucking everywhere" and "if life was so great in India, why the fuck are y'all here?"

This is so scary. She actually had a gun and wanted to shoot because these Indian American women had accents while speaking English. Disgusting. This awful woman needs to be prosecuted for a hate crime.

Twitter: @reemarasool

At one point, Upton says she is Mexican American, but shouts at the women, "I was born here" and "I paid my fucking way here." When asked "what makes [her] think that [they] are not American," she tells them, "because of the way you speak, because I'm a Mexican American, and I speak English."

Eventually, she becomes physically violent, hitting and shoving the women, and even threatening to kill the person filming. "Turn that goddamn phone off, or I swear to god I'll fucking shoot your ass," she can be heard saying.

On Thursday, the Plano Police Department arrested Upton on charges of bodily assault and making terroristic threats.

She has since been released on $10,000 bail, police spokesperson Andrae Smith told BuzzFeed News.

The incident is being investigated as a hate crime, police said, adding that "additional charges may be forthcoming."

In an interview with CBS-DFW, the women spoke out about the experience, saying they had just been saying goodbye to each other in the parking lot when Upton approached them.

"Our entire sense of safety was shattered in this incident," one of them said.

One of the women, Rani Banerjee, posted a video of the incident on Facebook, in which Upton can be heard calling them "curry-ass bitches" and mocking their weight as they phoned the police for help. Banerjee said it was a "frightening experience."

"I have lived in [the Dallas–Fort Worth area] for 29 years and never have I felt so humiliated, threatened, and scared for my life," she wrote. "Can’t believe this is what America has become."

Another one of the women, Bidisha Rudra, said in a Facebook post that they had "feared for [their] lives because she was extremely agitated and seemed totally out of control."

"A lot of people are asking what triggered this behavior," Rudra wrote. "Answer is ‘nothing’. We were talking amongst ourselves when she walked by and made a racially insinuating comment. And kept coming back to add additional insults as captured in the video. This unprovoked attack terrifies us even more."

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