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Florida Fishermen Filmed Threatening Black Fisherman With Racist Slurs For Getting Too Close To Their Boat
A group of fishermen was caught on video antagonizing fellow boaters—one of whom was Black—and using homophobic and racial slurs.
The hostile men—who were on a small boat called "Amanda V"—sped towards the young fishermen who had their lines cast and accused them of getting too close.
"I am going to break your f'king legs," threatened one of the men on the Amanda V, adding "Shut your f'cking [n-word] mouth."
The viral video was filmed by videographer Shannon Bustamante, who wanted to capture footage for his fishing YouTube channel, and was later edited and shared on Twitter by social media user Billy Corben.
According to CBS Miami, Bustamante said he was out on the water on February 25 with two friends who are commercial fishermen.
Bustamante said:
"Here comes this guy who just wanted a bone to pick with us, anyways. He pulls up, and you just see his true colors come out."
Warning: explicit and racist language
The video's superimposed text indicated this was the third time this week the hostile fishermen harassed them.
In response to being called the n-word, the Black fisherman yelled back at his aggressors and asked them to meet him at the boat ramp.
The Amanda V plowed through the water around the young fishermens' boat and killed any progress made for catching fish.
One of the men on the Amanda V yelled:
"Keep your n-word a** back in town."
Bustamante recalled of the racist attack:
"It's horrible. Saying those things, making threats, circling around the boat, it's just unacceptable."
In his 12-minute YouTube video, Bustamante described what happened on that day in the caption.
"My Commercial Fishing Friends invited me fishing out of Stuart Fl and we arrived to a spot filled with commercial Mackeral fishing boats."
"My Friend knew most of them and asked to anchor up beside two of his friends, but as we made our approach he goes ohhhh no there's that boat again. This boat happened to be the one shouting the n-word at his mate anytime they passed by them and had made silly threats in the passed for no other reason than the fact that his mate is an African American man on an all White Treasure Coast Fleet of about 30 -40 boats."
He continued:
"Sure enough we drop anchor and the boat they mentioned starting Screaming to get the F away and that us and our [n-word] friend are too close. This frustrated the captain so he pulled anchor and sped away from there."
"We anchor at our new spot and within 30 minutes here came trouble. The boat named Amanda V, Bee Lined straight to us and the rest is history with Physical threats and 1950s type of KKK Racial garbage spewed at the young mate."
You can watch Bustamante's full clip, here.
Despite accusations of the fishermen being too close to Amanda V, nowhere does it show in Bustamante's longer video that was the case.
The Daily Dot mentioned the shorter Twitter clip revealed the name of the owner of Amanda V in the comments.
The boat's owner was identified as Anthony Puleo—who is apparently a landscaper from Port St. Lucie—but it remained unclear if he was on the boat at the time the video was filmed.
This resulted in social media users visiting Puleo's business website en masse, which is currently down due to the "bandwidth limit exceeded" notification.
CBS 4's Karli Barnett said the news outlet heard back from one of the people on Amanda V but claimed he was not the one who hurled the racial slur and declined a request for an interview.
Bustamante said the fishing community was like family and his goal of posting the video was to demonstrate racist behavior like that shown in the clip will not be tolerated out on the water, or anywhere else.