WARNING: VIDEO CONTAINS OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE.
A man reportedly called a Korean woman a derogatory word for Asians and her boyfriend a homophobic slur after an incident on the road approaching the Portland International Airport on Wednesday.
Kayli Becker, a 27-year-old Vancouver resident, was driving a friend to the airport when she noticed a black SUV following her a little too close for comfort, she told The Oregonian/OregonLive by phone on Thursday.
As they stopped at a red light, Becker said she could feel the man in the SUV staring at her. She chose to ignore him, she said, but the man engaged her friend seated behind her asking him how his day was going.
"Good, how's yours?" her friend responded, according to Becker.
"Good. How's the (expletive)?" the man responded, Becker said, using a derogatory word for people of Asian descent.
"I looked over then and asked 'What did you call me?' and he said 'Ohhhh, you're a spicy (expletive).'" Becker recounted. "I've lived here my entire life and I've never been called a name like that."
She began to cry and, when the light turned green she said the man in the SUV sped off, weaving in and out of traffic and driving erratically. Incensed, Becker's boyfriend pulled out his cellphone and began trying to get a picture of the man's license plate as they trailed the man toward the departures terminal.
After going around the airport once, they finally caught up with the man. Becker's boyfriend captured video of their second encounter on his phone. On the resulting footage, the man in the camera, who appears to be in his 20s or 30s with his hair tied up in a bun, initially smiles and waves to the camera.
Becker's boyfriend can be heard asking why he isn't talking now, to which the man responds "I'm beautiful. I love the (expletive) camera."
"Why don't you say what you said before?" Becker's boyfriend asks.
"What that she's a spicy (expletive)?" the man says, repeating the epithet before calling the boyfriend a homophobic slur. "Do you even realize that my grandma's Chinese, you stupid (expletive) (expletive)?"
The video ends there and Becker said once they had the man on camera they left and didn't see the man again. She considered going to the police, she said, but she wasn't sure if the incident rose to the level of a hate crime.
"When someone does something like that and shows no remorse, I want them to know he can never do something like that again," she said.
The incident bears a striking resemblance to another incident of racism caught on camera in Washington County earlier this year. In that case, a woman posted a video on Facebook of what appeared to be a man clapping his hands and yelling a racist slur at her out the window of his car.
That video went viral, internet sleuths determined the man's identity and he was eventually fired from his plumbing job.
-- Kale Williams
kwilliams@oregonian.com
503-294-4048