A woman allegedly involved in an altercation with a 62-year-old street vendor who was thrown to the ground in downtown Los Angeles and repeatedly punched in a fight that was caught on video and circulated on social media was charged Monday with assault and other offenses.
Harmunie Heaven Church, 19, was charged with assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, battery with serious bodily injury and vandalism causing $400 of more in damage. She was scheduled to be arraigned sometime Monday in downtown Los Angeles, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
She was arrested Thursday and remains jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail, according to jail records.
Church is charged in connection with a fight that occurred with vendor Arabelia Martinez Garcia around 4 p.m. June 15 in the 700 block of Figueroa Street.
The vendor’s son, Constantino Garcia, said previously that the suspect was harassing his mother, saying she had no legal right to be a street vendor and telling her to go back to Mexico, among other racially charged statements.
According to a GoFundMe campaign launched by Garcia, Martinez was “physically and emotionally shaken” as a result of the pummeling she received, and her hot dog cart and equipment were damaged.
Video showed part of the altercation, during which the suspect apparently squirted some kind of sauce on the vendor’s hot dogs and car, prompting Martinez to toss a powdery substance at the suspect. A physical altercation ensues in which Martinez is eventually thrown to the ground, and the woman is seen repeatedly striking the vendor — as some bystanders attempt to intervene and eventually pull her away.
On TikTok, a woman claiming to be the other combatant in the fight denied using any racial slurs toward Martinez or asking about her right to be a street vendor. The woman — who is Black — claims it was the vendor who instigated the confrontation by refusing to sell her food.
“When I walked up to her, I had money,” the woman says in a series of TikTok videos. “She told me, `Me no serve your people.’ So yes, I retaliated, and I put Chamoy on her hot dogs. But I did nothing physical to her, to her physically, to her. Maybe to her belongings, but not to her. She physically attacked me first.”
The woman claims the vendor threw Tajin powder at her, which felt like pepper spray in her eyes.
“You thought I was just going to sit there and let her throw Tajin on me?” the woman says.
“I had no intentions on hurting her or attacking her,” the woman says. “… But after she threw Tajin and attacked me, like what, I was just supposed to walk away with Tajin on my face, my eyes burning? No, I’m not doing that.”
She also questioned why the video of the altercation was only posted online recently, suggesting the vendor and her family were using the incident to make money through the GoFundMe page.
“They are using this as a platform to make more money,” she said.
As of Monday, the GoFundMe page had raised more than $137,000.