- Police in Torrance,
California have identified a woman who recently went viral for making racist, anti-Asian statements in multiple recorded incidents as 56-year-old Long Beach resident Lena Hernandez. - Hernandez, per Torrance police, was involved in an incident in which she threatened a woman working out on the stairs in Wilson Park.
- Another recent viral incident depicted the woman who police have identified as Hernandez threatening a man's life, calling him racist names, and speaking gibberish at him.
- Investigators are currently searching for Hernandez.
Police in Torrance, California, are searching for a woman whose racist, anti-Asian statements have gone viral on social media recently, including most prominently an incident at a park in which she told a woman exercising on public stairs to "go back to whatever f-cking Asian country you belong in." Torrance police identified the suspect as 56-year-old Long Beach resident Lena Hernandez, per the LA Times.
Twitter user @rmtennell posted a video of the incident on Twitter, writing, "My friend was threatened in Wilson Park in Torrance, California today while she was working out in a public park by a Karen. She now does not feel safe to exercise in the park because of this." Twitter user @mynamegangg posted the video on Twitter approximately an hour later, and her tweet went viral, amassing nearly 192,000 likes.
—Rachel Tennell (@rmtennell) June 10, 2020
People online use the term "Karen" to describe white women who exhibit entitled, often racist behavior. In recent times, the moniker has been attached to women like Amy Cooper, who called the police after a Black bird-watcher asked her to leash her dog in Central Park, or Lisa Alexander, who called the police on a man for stenciling "Black Lives Matter" in chalk outside his home. In recent months, the title seems to have reached critical mass; it's now the de-facto title for basically every viral white woman caught on camera saying or doing something racist or entitled.
According to a June 12 press release from the department, Hernandez — referred to in the release as a "female suspect" — has been implicated in multiple racist incidents, including the incident on the stairs in which Hernandez threatened to have her family harm the woman working out. The press release says that after the victim of that incident filed a criminal threats report at the Torrance Police Department, investigators found two additional incidents involving the same suspect.
Per the press release, the second also occurred on the morning of June 10 at Wilson Park. "As the suspect was leaving the park, she confronted the second victim. During the second incident, the female suspect verbally threatened a male victim for not parking correctly and made racial slurs," the release says.
Video of that incident went viral on Twitter as well. In it, the woman, who police identified as Hernandez, tells a man sitting in his car to go home and threatens his life. After the man gets out of his car to capture her license plate, she begins to refer to him as "Chinaman" and speaks to him in gibberish, saying that his car was parked too close to hers despite the video showing that her car had crossed into the line between parking spaces. Throughout the video, the man calmly repeats to the woman, "get educated" and "respect."
—brendon mcnerney (@brendonmcnerney) June 11, 2020
The Torrance Police Department press release also mentions a third incident that reportedly took place on October 14, 2019 at the Del Amo Mall, in which a woman they believe to be the same suspect was "yelling and cursing at a female custodian while in the restroom." The release says that "the victim observed the verbal altercation, attempted to intervene and was pushed to the ground by the suspect. The suspect then punched the victim and left the location before security and police arrived."
Investigators have been to multiple locations trying to find Hernandez, according to Torrance Police Chief Eve Berg, who spoke at a press conference on Friday, June 12. Berg also said that the police are looking at the possibility that mental illness played a role in the incidents.
Sgt. Martinez of the Torrance Police Department told Insider that the case has been submitted to the city prosecutor's office, who will review the case and determine what, if any, charges Hernandez will face. The police department is currently still looking for Hernandez and is asking anyone with information about her whereabouts as well as any other victims to contact them.
- Read more:
- How the name Karen became a stand-in for problematic white women and a hugely popular meme
- Man with viral 'Karen' who confronted someone stenciling 'Black Lives Matter' near his own home has been fired from his job at a financial services firm
- A woman in a video appears to call the police claiming there's an 'African American man threatening my life' — he apparently had asked her to put her dog on a leash
- 'Kroger Karen' is going viral for using a stroller to block a Black woman from leaving a grocery store parking lot