A woman who was seen in a viral video verbally abusing an Asian-American Uber driver and telling him to go back to his country at a gas station in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been suspended, the company where she is employed confirmed.
As previously reported, the clip, shared on TikTok and YouTube, showed the Uber driver's interaction with the seemingly inebriated woman moments after he ejected her as well as her friends out of his vehicle for "cussing him out." Her male companion is seen trying to deescalate the situation as she tells the driver to "Go back to Asia!" at one point during the video.
In the description of the video, the driver, identified as Thai Long, wrote that he was subjected to "Asian hate" from a woman named "Stella." He explained that she entered the wrong address in the Uber app and as he was trying to "figure it out" she started verbally abusing him, which is when he told her to exit his vehicle.
Mistaken Identity
The clip instantly went viral on social media and internet sleuths, who only had the first name of the woman in the video in terms of information, did not waste any time in linking her to a similar-looking woman named Stella Karadimas. However, sources close to the falsely accused woman confirmed she would have been in Arizona when the video is believed to have been recorded.
After Queen City Nerve reporter Justin LaFrancois reached out to Karadimas' employer, an online thrift store named ThredUP, the company put out a statement on social media saying Karadimas was "falsely identified" as the woman in the video. "We are coming forward because this case of mistaken identity has resulted in serious concern for our employee's safety and privacy," the statement reads.
Woman Later ID'd as Stella Thomas, Facing Disciplinary Action from Employer
Social media users continued with their digging and came up with another name, a Stella Thomas. They later found that Thomas had deleted all of her social media accounts and a LinkedIn profile that listed her as the marketing manager for AB Ludvig Svensson, a company headquartered in Sweden with an American operations office in Charlotte.
Representatives of Ludvig Svensson later confirmed to Queen City Nerve that the woman in the video is, in fact, Stella Thomas, she has since been "suspended." "Our company enforces a multicultural environment and unfortunately this is something people do," a representative of Svensson told Queen City Nerve. "She's been with the company a long time and she's been a very good asset."
The company's president of American operations, Mauricio Manotas, who also lives in Charlotte also issued the following statement. "We at Ludvig Svensson strongly object to this kind of behavior. Disciplinary actions are being taken as we speak. We support a safe and all-inclusive work environment."
