A video of a white streamer pepper-spraying a black man before running into a store, falsely claiming he was carrying a gun and was trying to shoot him has gone viral on social media.
The video, shared on the sub-reddit r/PublicFreakout, shows the streamer, who goes by the name Hanzo, live-streaming himself following an African-American man on a Los Angeles sidewalk.
'He's Threatening to Shoot Me'
"Do you want to fight me?" the streamer asks the man, who responds with, "No, not really."
Hanzo continues to urge the black man to "fight" him as some of his followers leave comments telling him to mace the man and run.
The streamer continues to pursue him and moments later, pulls out his mace before spraying it in the black man's face.
"Hey, what are you doing man?" the unsuspecting pedestrian yells as he shields his face from the attack. The streamer then makes a run for it, as the black man chases after him, entering a liquor store he frequently visits.
"Hey man, this guy here is threatening to shoot me with a gun," Hanzo is heard telling the cashier. "He's coming in here right now. He just maced me."
"He's threatening to shoot me. He said he had a pistol on him" he adds. "Call the cops, please. He said he had a gun."
The black man repeatedly tries to iterate that he didn't do anything and even opens his jacket to prove to the employee that he wasn't carrying a weapon. Hanzo and the man are then both asked to leave the store.
The video ends with Hanzo threatening to mace the black man again, yelling, "I'm calling the police on you." Watch the video below:
The video instantly went viral with thousands of comments, slamming the streamer for falsely reporting that a black man was carrying a weapon, which could have gotten him killed.
"This is weaponization of white privilege. That needs to be a felony," wrote one user, while another commented, "This isn't just weaponizing white privilege against a Black Man, this was attempted murder. He knew that saying he had a gun could end in the man's death.
Who is Hanzo?
Hanzo is a live-streamer who netizens have likened to "Baked Alaska" – a far-right YouTuber. Hanzo's YouTube channel has been deleted since the above video went viral.
However, this is not the first time he has filmed himself macing someone before falsely accusing them of something. Just a couple of days before the above incident, he streamed himself macing a man and then accused him of inappropriately touching girls.
