Taxi Driver Pepper-Sprays Woman After Aiming Homophobic Slurs in Her Direction

A taxi driver in Bogota, Colombia, was seen pepper-spraying a woman after directing homophobic slurs toward her and her daughter on November 19, local news reported.

Maria Natalia Garcia Vargas recorded this video and told Storyful the taxi driver “attacked my mother with pepper spray after insulting us and saying homophobic words to us.”

Vargas said the man directed slurs at her and her mother “for not giving him way at a gas station, where the man had entered the wrong way.”

In the footage, Vargas’s mother confronts the taxi driver, where she’s seen spitting on the man just as he uses the spray. The driver then laughs as the woman walks away, prior to him coughing from the lingering spray.

Vargas’s mother told local news: “When he activated the gas my reaction was to spit. Then he threw the pepper spray in my face, which caused a strong reaction from my eyes and skin,” according to a machine translation.

“We are carrying out a sanctioning process with the Bogota authorities and the taxi driver’s employer, because the attack caused physical and psychological damage to my mother and me,” Vargas told Storyful. Credit: Maria Natalia García Vargas via Storyful