A woman caught on video harassing two Spanish-speaking shoppers at a Colorado grocery store was arrested on Monday the Garfield County Sheriff's office told Fox News.
Linda Dwire was charged with harassment after a now-viral video appeared to show Dwire and another shopper get into a shouting match with another woman identified as Kamira Trent at the grocery store in Rifle. According to a Facebook post by Fabiola Velasquez, Dwire told the two Hispanic women from Mexico to quit speaking Spanish while they were in the U.S.
"I never thought this would happen to me," Velasquez wrote in Spanish.
Velasquez says Trent stepped up and began berating Dwire after hearing her yell at the two Hispanic women for not speaking English.
Velasquez's video, which has been viewed more than 1.3 million times on Facebook as of Friday morning, doesn't show the initial confrontation, but she did capture the shouting match between Trent and Dwire.
"You do not harass people!" Trent can be heard shouting back at the other woman. “I’m calling the cops. You leave these women alone. Get out!"
“You come from a generation that’s destroying this country," Dwire retorts.
“No I do not. I have respect. You do not harass people,” Trent responds.
“You will lose your country. You know what, you will lose this country,” Dwire tells Trent, while pointing her finger at her.
“You do not harass Hispanic women!” Trent says, furious, while following the retreating Dwire to the front of the store.
According to Buzzfeed News, Velasquez was with her friend Isabel Marin when Dwire suddenly became aggressive and put her hand in her face while she was at the store with her children.
Trent said she overheard Dwire berating the two Hispanic women, telling them, “You’re in America. You’re in my country. You can’t speak Spanish here. You need to speak English if you’re going to be in America.”
“She just got angrier and angrier. I was trying to get her away from the two women, but she wasn’t going to leave them alone,” Trent said. “What she said and the way she said it was wrong.”
For her part, Dwire says she's not a racist and denies that she was harassing the two women.
"It has nothing to do with race. It’s a patriotic thing,” Dwire said. “When people come to my country, they need to love it enough to speak English."
"[Immigrants] rather have their country here. I don’t mind them coming [to the US] as long as they want to be an American and not go on our welfare system,” Dwire said. "When there are so many people that they don’t learn English, that’s what divides our country."
Photo: Garfield County Sheriff’s Office