TikTokers capture man’s anti-Asian rant at California In-N-Out. ‘We are in danger’
Friends Arine Kim and Elliot Ha didn’t know what to think at first when a man confronted them as they filmed a food review for TikTok at a California In-N-Out.
“You guys filming yourself eating? You’re weird homosexuals,” the man says off-camera in the Christmas Eve video shot inside the San Ramon hamburger restaurant.
At first, Kim and Ha try to laugh off the bizarre remark.
“I feel like this is a fever dream,” Ha says. He jokes that he “deserves to be hate-crimed” for eating at In-N-Out. But then the stranger returns.
“Are you Japanese or Korean?” he demands. When Ha says he’s Korean, the man asks if he’s “Kim Jong-un’s boyfriend.” The man becomes irate as Ha tries to joke with him.
“Normally I could spit in your face,” the man says as Ha and Kim grow visibly alarmed. “See you outside in a minute.”
The man then stood outside the restaurant staring at them through the window before leaving, Kim told KPIX. Restaurant workers escorted Ha and Kim to their vehicles for their safety.
“Elliot and I were shaking and stuttering towards the end of it,” Kim told the station. “The alarm bells were ringing inside our head, like we are in danger.”
“I can’t speak,” Ha says in the video as they attempt to finish their food review. “Dude, that genuinely never happened to me before.”
“Oh my God, I can’t even do this, “ Kim says, noting that she’s so nervous she accidentally ate some of the paper wrapped around her hamburger.
On Monday, Dec. 26, San Ramon police arrested Jordan Douglas Krah, 40, of Denver, Colorado, on two charges of committing a hate crime, a news release said.
Police said they reached out to Ha and Kim after the video, which has more than 3.1 million reactions on TikTok, went viral.
San Ramon is a city of 87,000 people about 35 miles east of San Francisco.
This story was originally published December 27, 2022 at 10:42 AM with the headline "TikTokers capture man’s anti-Asian rant at California In-N-Out. ‘We are in danger’."