A man who was filmed throwing away a homeless person’s clothes and bedding has been arrested in Oakland, California.
Mobile phone footage of the incident, which took place on Friday evening beside Lake Merritt, in the heart of the city, was recorded by local man John Harris.
Onlookers can be heard remonstrating with a jogger as he rifles through a makeshift camp belonging to a homeless man identified by locals as Greg “Drew” Markson, shoving armfuls of clothing and bedding into in a bin.
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When bystanders object, the shirtless runner says he is “picking up the trash”.
Witnesses said the jogger also threw some of Drew’s possessions into the lake. Floating debris can be seen in the video clip.
The footage “set off a social media firestorm”, says local paper The Mercury News. Many viewers connected the jogger’s attitude towards the homeless to the wider phenomenon of gentrification transforming the area.
The assailant was nicknamed “Jogger Joe” in reference to “BBQ Becky”, the name given to the white Oakland woman who attracted online ire in April when she was filmed calling the police to a group of black people having a BBQ beside the same lake.
Yesterday, “Jogger Joe” was identified as 31-year-old Henry Sintay, when he was arrested on suspicion of robbery.
However, the arrest resulted from an incident which took place on Saturday, the day after the filming of the video.
Another local resident, Matt Nelson, had confronted Sintay at the lake, where he was removing some of the debris, KTVU reports. When Sintay realised the conversation was being recorded, he allegedly grabbed Nelson’s mobile phone in a scuffle which the victim says left him with cuts and bruises.
Meanwhile, well-wishers have raised more than $10,000 (£7,500) for Drew, a longtime resident of the park.
“Like the thousands of other people in the Bay Area without homes, Drew is one of our neighbours,” organisers wrote on the GoFundMe page. “We're disgusted that someone thought it was ok to treat Drew this way... It's not ok to destroy someone's things just because they are homeless.”
