A woman named Arlene Bunch went viral on Thanksgiving weekend for hurling racist remarks at an Indian American family aboard a United Airlines shuttle bus in LAX. However, she has since, attributed her behavior to an injury she took to her brain last year.
Parvez Taufiq, a photographer, and his family were on the receiving end of the remarks, and he captured footage of the incident. At the time, he, his wife, and their three children were coming back home from a vacation.
The Daily Mail identified the woman to be Arlene Bunch, and she first passed comments at the son, but things got heated when at one point, she told the kids to "shut up."
All we know about the incident involving Arlene Bunch and Parvez Taufiq
In videos circulating online, Arlene Bunch can be seen flashing her middle fingers at the family and calling Taufiq a 'f*****g crazy' and 'tandoori stinky a**.'
She also claimed that Indians “are gross, man.” However, she has since claimed that her actions were a response to Taufiq allegedly calling her "white trash."
“You are racist toward me, I’m American,” she told the man, who was born in the U.S., KTLA reported.
Arlene Bunch is a real estate broker with a valid license in California. In an interview, she claimed that Taufiq and his family pushed her around and passed comments at her. She said to Fox 11:
"[Parwez Taufiq] pushed me to the side to get in front of me and the lady made him go back to the end of the line and he's talking to his wife, "supposedly they are first class. Obviously, with no class and look at the way they're dressed… they're white trash."
She went on, noting that
"[They were] aggressive when we loaded the shuttle. He looks over to me and says "shut your big f*****g mouth you white trash b***h" and then my husband steps in. None of this is in the video. And most people know me as a very kind, calm person, but since the brain injury, I can get agitated very easily."
The injury took place on March 22, 2023, when Arlene Bunch suffered injuries during a propane leak explosion at her home, located at Mammoth Lake, the Daily Mail has reported. An old GoFundMe page, initiated to raise funds for her and her family, indicates that she sustained injuries, however, there was no mention of a brain injury. Here's what it says, in part:
"Arlene, who was in the face of the blast, was thrown 20 feet from the home and buried under 15 feet of rubble. She was flown to Reno via CareFlight and immediately rushed into surgery. She is in the ICU and in critical - but stable – condition. In addition to burns to her face, chest and arms, she sustained several large lacerations, a punctured lung, a fractured rib, a fractured sternum, a fractured vertebra, and a shattered foot. There isn’t a part of her body that wasn’t affected."
Pervez Taufiq told KTLA, "That really made me snap. I said, ‘You can’t talk to my sons that way.’"
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Taufiq also told the outlet that he was more hurt that only one individual on the shuttle stood up for his family before an employee asked Bunch to leave.
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