Joanna Vasquez
*The woman seen in a viral video viciously beating up a female taco vendor in Los Angeles on Aug. 6, then taking off in a purple Lexus without paying for her food, has been arrested and fired from her job.
Renee Hines, 36, from Bakersfield, was taken into custody Wednesday (Aug. 9) and booked into the Los Angeles County jail on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement.
Hines also was fired from her job as a temporary contractor after her employer learned of the viral video. Yusen Logistics America, a global supply chain company based in New Jersey, told the Los Angeles Times it terminated a work agreement with Hines, who had been assigned to the firm by her employer, Simplified Labor Staff Solutions.
“We were alerted to an online video of a temporary worker whom her employer had assigned to work at one of our warehouses,” a statement from Yusen said. “This person is no longer assigned to work at our company and will not be allowed to return to any of our facilities.” The company added it “does not condone violence of any kind.”
Watch video of the incident below:
The incident took place around 6:35 p.m. Sunday at Tacos Ortiz on Grandee Avenue in Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. Police said Hines “punched and pepper sprayed” vendor Joanna Vasquez after she requested payment for the tacos that she’d ordered and eaten. Cellphone footage captured by Vasquez’s co-worker shows Hines yanking on Vasquez’s shirt while repeatedly punching the much smaller woman and calling her a “b**ch.”
“She pulled my hair and then punched me in my shoulders,” Vasquez told KTLA in Spanish. “She punched me in the face. She unloaded on me and then let me go.”
Hines also deliberately knocked items off a table, and threw a sandwich board sign at Vasquez’s co-worker when she saw him recording her license plate number.
The operators of Tacos Ortiz filed a police report and posted the video of the attack on Instagram, appealing to the public for help with identifying the attacker.
“I just want her to pay for what she did,” Vasquez said before Hines’ arrest. “They need to put her in jail and fine her and she needs to pay for all the damage because it is not right what she did.”
Edin Alex Enamorado, a street vendor advocate, told the LA Times that Hines had eaten at Tacos Ortiz at least twice before and allegedly left without paying.
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