Two of four women shown harassing street vendor in video have ties to Cal State San Marcos
Cal State San Marcos said Tuesday that a current student and a former student are among the four women shown harassing a San Diego street vendor in a video that sparked anger when it went viral on social media.
The university also said that a third student, who is currently enrolled, shot the video and uploaded it to TikTok, where it was modified and spread to other platforms, including Instagram.
The school said that all of the current and former students are women, but it declined to provide their identities. The school has been in contact with all three.
“The actions in this video are extremely disrespectful to the vendor and go against the university’s values and how we expect members of our community to behave,” said Margaret Chantung, spokesperson for Cal State San Marcos.
“Our dean of students is looking into the matter to more fully determine what happened.”
More than 100 street vendors in Santa Ana have been shut down in recent weeks for allegedly selling food “unfit for human consumption” and for lacking proper county permitting, the city said Tuesday.
Chantung says the incident appears to have occurred on Sunday or Monday night, when four young women began arguing about the price of the hot dogs the vendor was selling at a stand near Viejas Arena at San Diego State University. The price was $7.
In the video, one of the women calls the vendor a loser. And two women reach out and touch the food he is grilling, causing the man to become upset.
Officials have yet to confirm the identity of any of the four women, and the name of the vendor is still in question.
Chantung said it appears that an unidentified man modified the original version of the video and said, in a voice-over, that all four women were San Diego State students. He also gave what he claimed were the addresses they used on social media, and added, “Let’s find them and hold them accountable.”
A pair of street vendors along with a trio of community organizations sued the city on Wednesday, hoping to eliminate “no-vending” zones.
San Diego State told the San Diego Union-Tribune on Tuesday that “none of the individuals in the video are its students. Further, while individual names have been shared online, at least one San Diego State student and a student organization tagged by social media accounts reported being misidentified and not present in the video, and none of the remaining names shared are SDSU.”
The misinformation spread faster than the universities could deal with it. The International Business Times quickly published a story that contained unverified information about the incident.
“This shows the viral nature of videos,” Chantung said. “There is a mob mentality around this. If you look at the comments, [they say], ‘We’ve got to bring justice.’ ”
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