A woman who recently went on a racist tirade against an Indian family on an LAX shuttle bus is blaming her racism on a brain injury.
Arlene Bunch was a passenger on a United Airlines shuttle bus at LAX over the Thanksgiving weekend when she encountered Pervez Taufiq and his family, KTLA reports. Bunch started things off by telling Taufiq’s children to shut up. It only got worse from there:
“That really made me snap,” Taufiq told KTLA. “I said, ‘You can’t talk to my sons that way.’”
In footage of the upsetting tirade, Bunch is seen flipping the family off, calling them “f*****g crazy,””tandoori stinky” and saying Indian people “are gross, man.”
“You are racist toward me, I’m American,” she told Taufiq who was born in the U.S.
‘So are we,’ he replied.
‘You’re not American,’ Bunch insisted. ‘Not originally no, you’re from f*****g India.’
‘I was born in America,’ Taufiq said.
‘No you weren’t, that’s not on your passport,’ she replied. Taufiq said, ‘Yeah, you want to see my passport? Is that going to make you happy?’
Bunch told KTLA that Taufiq was actually the aggressor. She claims that he pushed her while they were aboard the flight and that things only got worse when they all boarded the shuttle. But that’s not what caused her wild racist outburst on the bus. Instead, she blames her racism on a brain injury from a propane explosion at her home in March 2023.
“[They] were aggressive when we loaded the shuttle,” she now says, and claims Taufiq called her a white trash b***h. “None of that is in the video. Most people know me as a very kind, calm person, but since the brain injury, I can get agitated very easily.”
Unsurprisingly, Bunch doesn’t seem to be sorry for her actions and all seemed to double down on them in an interview with the Daily Mail. Bunch claims she was defending herself because she was called “white trash.” As for Taufiq and his family, he told KTLA that he was disturbed that just one person on the bus spoke up for him and his family. “The takeaway for us is definitely if you see something, say something, try to stop it,” he said. “Do your best because you could be next, and you want everyone to be in your corner right when it happens.”
