The pregnant nurse accused of trying to steal a bike from a black man has announced plans to sue every media outlet who falsely misrepresented the incident.
A video recently went viral, showing Sarah Comrie cry out for help as a group of young men claimed she was trying to steal their bike.
The video, taken on May 12, began by showing Comrie shouting, “Help! Help me! Please help me!” as a young black man grabs the bike and tells her, “This is not your bike,” and another says “It’s his. It’s his.”
“Get off me,” Comrie repeatedly said to the man holding onto the bike. “You’re hurting my fetus. You’re hurting my unborn child,” she said, to which the man replied: “I’m not touching you. You’re putting your stomach on my hand.”
At one point she began crying as she asks a nearby man for help. “You are acting. Stop fake crying,” the man recording told her.
The video ended with Comrie getting off of the bike and looking down at her phone, likely to pay for another bike.
When the video of the incident was posted online, Comrie was instantly painted as a “Karen” and white supremacist.
The rhetoric also went beyond just a few small media outlets, with even famous civil rights attorney Ben Crump sharing the video and saying: “This is unacceptable! A white woman was caught on camera attempting to STEAL a Citi Bike from a young Black man in NYC.”
“She grossly tried to weaponize her tears to paint this man as a threat,” he claimed in the now-deleted tweet. “This is EXACTLY the type of behavior that has endangered so many Black men in the past!”
Ben Crump and the rest are trying to delete the evidence. This tweet is now gone.
LOL pic.twitter.com/7mlkPczsaW— Nate The Lawyer (@NatetheLawyer) May 20, 2023
One news outlet went so far as to compare Comrie to Carolyn Bryant Donham — the woman largely responsible for the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till.
Sarah Jane Comrie, the “Citi Bike Karen” who fake cried for help from a group of young Black men, reminds us Carolyn Bryant Donham, who accused Emmett Till and got him lynched.https://t.co/32ixN1q4h1
— NewsOne (@newsone) May 16, 2023
Comrie’s attorney, Justin Marino, has since provided receipts showing that the bike in question was indeed actually purchased by Comrie.
Marino appeared on “America’s Newsroom” on Friday, where he explained how Comrie, a 6-month pregnant physician’s assistant, had just gotten off a 12-hour shift and was trying to go home when the group of young men stopped her.
“She went to a vacant bike where no one was touching, no one was on. She mounted the bike, she paid for the bike. She ended up actually pulling back off the docking station, and then around that time these individuals were claiming that was their bike,” he told Fox anchor Bill Hemmer, according to Mediaite.
“Someone pushed the bike while she was on it back into the docking station, so it locked again, and that’s where the rest of the video picks up.”
While many have questioned who was the true purchaser of the bike, Marino said the receipts “show she rented the bike.”
“The serial numbers match, so there’s no question that the bike that she is on in that video is a bike that she reserved.”
So many people have no common sense and no ability to detect bullshit. Did you actually believe that a pregnant white lady randomly picked a fight with a group of black males? How could that have ever seemed like the most plausible explanation? How stupid do you have to be
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) May 18, 2023
If she has receipts proving the bike was hers, then what actually happened was a bunch of youths ganged up to harass a 6 months pregnant woman—as you might have guessed from the beginning, if you actually watched the video and heard them laughing at her. https://t.co/KpdbL8tto3
— Helen Andrews (@herandrews) May 18, 2023
He also noted that the reason Comrie sought an attorney was because she was afraid of losing her job, after having been placed on leave by her employer, pending their own review into the “disturbing” incident.
“We are aware of the video involving a health care provider off duty and away from the hospital campus. The incident in the video is disturbing. The provider is currently out on leave and will remain on leave pending review,” NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue said in a statement posted on Twitter. “As a health system, we are committed to providing an environment for our patients and staff that is free from discrimination of any kind.”
— NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue (@BellevueHosp) May 16, 2023
But according to Marino, “Race had nothing to do with it.”
“There’s a reason defamation laws exist, and we plan to pursue them,” he said, according to Mediaite.
The target of their lawsuit, he said, is “Every organization that referred to her as a Karen, a racist, and a thief.”
“We’re looking to right a wrong. We’re doing that here through the public, letting them know what happened, but we’re doing it through the court system as well so these institutions are going to think twice before they try to ruin someone’s life,” Marino said.
He also spoke of death threats against Comrie in a separate interview.
“She’s been threatened. People have been outside the house. She’s had someone send her a picture of her front door, saying, ‘I’m here for you,'” he said, according to CBS News.
He also clarified that they aren’t targeting the young men in the video, only “the media who defamed her,” according to Mediaite
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