,

New Jersey Man Accused of Assaulting Black Transit Worker Who Asked Him to Put on a Face Mask

To misquote my favorite Lin-Manuel Miranda musical, 'Everything is racist in New Jersey.'

Since the beginning of this pandemic, we have seen no shortage of racists and otherwise terrible people who put essential workersโ€”who are just trying to do their jobsโ€”through hell, all because they canโ€™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, theyโ€™re hard-headed, and the workers are having to pay the cost of their stubbornness.

Video will return here when scrolled back into view
Trump’s Tariffs Might Stick Around. What Should We Buy Now?
Trump’s Tariffs Might Stick Around. What Should We Buy Now?

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 involvedโ€”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.

โ€œHe said, โ€˜Sir, can you please put on your mask?โ€™โ€ James told NJ Advance Media on Thursday. โ€œIt was almost an immediate confrontation.โ€

James, a landscape architect, said he started recording because the exchange โ€œhad become very loud and because in the day we live in, everything should be recorded.โ€

โ€œ(Vitulano) was saying all kinds of homophobic slurs, racist slurs,โ€ James said. โ€œHe was all over the place.โ€

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.

โ€œI heard sneakers screeching against the floor,โ€ James said. โ€œThe guy had pushed the conductor into the corner [and] the conductor was in a bad spot. He didnโ€™t have any room to move.โ€

James said he rushed over and โ€œgrabbed him, restrained him, brought him to the ground and then stayed on top of him while I called the police.โ€

Vitulanoโ€™s mother spoke with ABC 7 about the incident, and unsurprisingly, she blamed her sonโ€™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.

โ€œYou 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,โ€ she said. โ€œNothing was mentioned about my sonโ€™s serious mental illness and he was not on his medication, but yet everything else to incriminate my son is being put online.โ€

Sooooo, listenโ€”Iโ€™ve never been to Weehawken, N.J., before. Maybe thereโ€™s something in the water there that causes a rare mental disorder no one has ever heard of called โ€œanti-negrosis,โ€ and symptoms include an aversion to face masks and yielding to a Black personโ€™s authority. But it sounds to me like Vitulanoโ€™s mother is no stranger to her sonโ€™s racist outbursts.

Still, she insisted her son is โ€œnot a thug, and weโ€™re not prejudiced here either.โ€

Itโ€™s almost as if sheโ€™s defending her son by telling on herself. I just have a hard time imagining she keeps an n-word-free house, is all Iโ€™m saying.

ย ย 

Straight From The Root

Sign up for our free daily newsletter.