An early run for a Peninsula teenager turned ugly and he got the aftermath on video.
Steve Johnson Jr., 17, says he goes for a run every day but Thursday didn’t go as planned.
“There's this lady coming behind me, she's getting like really loud and yelling belligerent things at me, telling me to get out of the way,” said Johnson Jr., who said feels targeted because he’s Black.
In the video, a woman shouts several expletives at the teen and threatens him when he pulls out his cell phone.
“I will smack your … head for taking a photograph of me,” said the woman in the video.
He started recording because another woman nearby said he should get the exchange on video.
“Get it away,” said the woman. “I’m going to call the police.”
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Johnson’s father is furious saying he moved his son away from San Francisco years ago to try to keep him safe.
“I had to save up a lot of money, spend a lot of rent just so my son can run down to the store and not have to worry about gang violence,” said Steve Johnson Sr. “But now it aint even gang violence. It's people in nice neighborhoods, so called nice neighborhoods, attacking children.”
A police spokesperson said the woman was cited for misdemeanor child abuse because she made contact with the teen with her bag.
But she was released because he wasn’t injured and because of COVID-19 considerations at the county jail.
NBC Bay Area tried to contact the woman who was arrested but she doesn’t have a published local address or phone number.
In the video, she did not use any racial slurs but both father and son say that with so many confrontations happening across the country now, this was alarming.
“There's too many people just lashing out nowadays, and people are dying,” Johnson Sr. said.
Johnson Jr. said he could have defended himself but knows this whole situation would have ended differently.
“As a trained boxer, and ranked no. 6 in the United States, I feel like, if I would have reacted the way a lot of people would have assumed I would have reacted by punching that lady, I would be the one on the news, for hurting an old lady, an old caucasian lady,” he said.
