ROCHESTER — The man who took a video of a toward a 5-year-old Black boy at a Rochester park said he has been subject to daily death threats since the video went viral and that he has had to relocate his family to keep them safe.
He said the death threats began soon after his phone number leaked online.
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“I didn’t want to make any money off of that video at all. I just wanted the world to see. I’m being punished very severely after doing something good,” said Sharmake Omar, the man whose video has been viewed millions of times worldwide since it was released to social media. “That’s crazy, crazy.”
Omar described his ordeal in an interview on Facebook on Sunday with Nashauna Johnson-Lenoir, the founder and director of Journie, a nonprofit focused on social justice issues. Omar told Johnson-Lenoir he had to stop taking calls from his business and family because the calls became so incessant.
He also said he counseled a driver in his employ to park his truck and seek safety in a hotel for a while. He said the Facebook interview was the first time he had ventured outside since the video went viral.
Omar said he took the video at the Soldiers Field Park playground after witnessing a white woman using a racial slur toward a child there. The Rochester City Attorney’s Office said the incident happened Monday, April 28. The woman, who later identified herself as Shiloh Hendrix, has so she and her family could relocate.
Since the video went viral, members of Rochester’s Black community have The Rochester Police Department has and the matter is being reviewed by the Rochester City Attorney’s Office.
In the Facebook interview, Omar, who said he has been a resident of Rochester most of his life, added new details to the playground confrontation between himself and Hendrix over the racial epithet and disputed other aspects of the story that have gone public.
Omar said he often supervises his children at Soldiers Field while they play at the playground. He said he first became aware of Hendrix when he says he saw her chasing the boy. At first, he thought they were playing, but then he heard her use the racial slur as she pursued him. Omar went up to the woman and confronted her. He said she used the same slur “multiple times” against him. That’s when he took out his phone and began recording the confrontation.
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“I said, ‘Go ahead, repeat what you said so the world can see,’ ” he said.
Omar said she kept up her verbal onslaught. He said there were other people at the park, but none chose to say anything or intervene. Early reports claimed the woman was angry at the boy for taking something from a diaper bag, but Omar said that was not true, that the boy took an apple sauce packet that was left on a bench.
“He didn’t go through her bag,” he said. “He was not stealing anything from her. It’s a 5-year-old child with autism.”
Omar said the woman called somebody to come pick her up and said she was being recorded. Later, when he and his children were returning to their car, Omar said a van rolled by with Hendrix inside, who rolled down the window and continued the racial barrage and gave Omar the middle finger.
“That’s when it ended,” he said.
Omar said he doesn’t have that many TikTok followers, so when he posted the video, it didn’t gain much traction. But the video was picked up by Michael McWhorter, known online as Tizzy Ent, who has more than 9.5 million followers on TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube, and the video exploded on social media with more than 13 million views by Monday.
The incident has sparked competing online fundraising appeals. The woman has raised more than $660,000 for herself and her family, and an appeal launched by the Rochester branch of the NAACP has raised $340,000 on behalf of the 5-year-old’s family.
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Since the video went viral, the story has generated national headlines with media organizations from the Washington Post to People magazine covering the story.
During the interview, Johnson-Lenoir questioned Omar about criminal sexual conduct charges that were filed against him in 2022, which have since been dredged up since the incident occurred. Omar said the charges were baseless and were later dismissed, a fact confirmed by Minnesota state court records.
“A Black man accused of a crime like that doesn’t go unpunished in this country,” Johnson-Lenoir said.
During the interview, Omar said the boy’s family is new to the country, perhaps less than a year, and not familiar with social media. He said the father of the boy was upset with him for posting the video, thinking Omar was trying to enrich himself.
Omar denied that was his intent and said he had made “less than a dollar.” He also did not express regret for making it public.
“I’m not looking for fame,” he said. “I just did it because I was trying to help this kid.”
Johnson-Lenoir expressed disgust with the backlash Omar and his family are receiving.
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“It’s like you’ve become the villain in a story where you’re actually the hero, and that is so upsetting to me,” she said.
Asked if Rochester is a racist community, Omar said not “whole entire Rochester.”
“There is some good and some bad everywhere,” he said.
Watch the interview which includes strong language.
The Trust Project
