Advertisement

White man calls 77-year-old disabled widow ‘ugly Black bastard’ on plane

"Don't talk to me in a foreign language, you stupid ugly cow!"

An unidentified man racially abuses Delsie Gayle on October 19, 2018. (Screenshot via David Lawrence/Facebook)
An unidentified man racially abuses Delsie Gayle on October 19, 2018. (Screenshot via David Lawrence/Facebook)

A 77-year-old disabled widow says she is struggling to eat and sleep after enduring racist abuse on a Friday flight to London.

Delsie Gayle was returning from a vacation in Spain when a white man seated by the window in the same row began yelling at her, calling her an “ugly Black bastard” and a “stupid ugly cow.”

“I tell you this: If you don’t go to another seat, I’ll push you to another seat!” he yelled.

Gayle’s daughter told ITV News that the trip to Barcelona had been planned to raise her mother’s spirits, since her husband of more than 50 years passed away nearly a year ago.

Advertisement

“I feel very low. He paid a fare to go on holiday, I’ve paid mine, so why does he abuse me for that due to the color of my skin?” Gayle said. “He do it with me and he gets away, he’ll do it to somebody else.”

David Lawrence, a 56-year-old musician who recorded the racist rant on Friday and posted it to social media the next day, described the incident to CNN.

“When you watch the footage, you’ll see it starts to unfold where this man starts a torrent of abuse, absolutely disgusting, despicable words thrown at this elderly Black woman. If that was another situation where that was a Black man doing that to an elderly white woman, they would have escorted him off the flight. He probably would have ended up in a Spanish jail even today.”

Ryanair reportedly didn’t remove the racist passenger, who remains unidentified, from the flight. Instead, Gayle was the one who was forced to change seats. Ryanair still hasn’t apologized to Gayle.

The Irish-based airline tweeted that it had been in contact with authorities on Sunday, two days after the incident.

Essex police confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it is investigating the incident. “Essex Police takes prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported. We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities on the investigation,” it said.