{"id":148986,"date":"2026-03-01T12:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T12:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/148986\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T12:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T12:47:08","slug":"victim-of-nyc-racist-boot-fire-attack-said-she-had-to-stand-up-to-social-media-trolls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/148986\/","title":{"rendered":"Victim of NYC racist boot fire attack said she had to stand up to social media trolls"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman whose boots were burned by a pair of MAGA-loving Internet bloggers<\/a> during a racist tirade in Manhattan told the News she felt violated sexually before the street encounter turned racial,<\/a> and said getting them off the street will save another victim from dealing with the pain she\u2019s still processing.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u201dThey just walked up to me,\u201d the 54-year-old social worker said of the Feb.19 assault. \u201cThey were strangers and just walked up to me. They just said, \u2018You\u2019re beautiful, can I kiss you?\u2019<\/p>\n

I said, \u2018No\u2019.<\/p>\n

He said, \u2018If you were my slave, I could kiss you,\u2019 and that\u2019s how it started.\u201d<\/p>\n

The victim, 54, fresh off a birthday the day before, said she was picking up a cake in Chelsea to continue the celebration when she clashed with the cretins, one of whom wore a red \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d hat at W. 26th St. and Seventh Ave. She declined to be identified by her full name.<\/p>\n

Cops said Michael Santiago, 31, and Michael James, 33, confronted the Black woman and unleashed a slew of racist insults that were caught on camera and posted online.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to f\u2014 you right up your n\u2014\u2013 a\u2013,\u201d the man in the MAGA hat screamed. \u201cI want to f\u2014 a slave. You\u2019re my slave. You\u2019re my slave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/p>\n

Barry Williams\/ New York Daily News<\/p>\n

Michael James, left, and Michael Santiago are pictured in police custody outside the NYPD Midtown South Precinct station house on Thursday Feb. 26, 2026 in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams\/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

At one point, one of the provocateurs asked to kiss the victim\u2019s pair of boots. Instead, she said, he knelt down and set one of her boots on fire with a hand-held blowtorch.<\/p>\n

The hair on the boots were singed but the flames quickly petered out, a video of the incident shows. Cops say the $89 pair of boots were ruined.<\/p>\n

Both men were arrested almost a week later and charged with attempted assault, criminal mischief and menacing, all as hate crimes, as well as aggravated harassment, arson and criminal tampering.<\/p>\n

The two suspects live in the same apartment building on the Upper East Side, according to cops.<\/p>\n

The social worker said she is still traumatized by the afternoon attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was shocked. I was very shocked,\u201d she said. \u201cI never heard these words before. No one has ever called me a slave, ever. I\u2019m a very honorable woman. I went to college. At the end of the day, men don\u2019t talk to me like that. These men, telling me to suck their d\u2014-, calling me a slave, calling me a bitch, all of these things,. I\u2019m over a certain age. I\u2019m 54. At my age, I don\u2019t have encounters like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/p>\n

Barry Williams\/ New York Daily News<\/p>\n

Michael James is pictured in police custody leaving the NYPD’s Midtown South Precinct stationhouse on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026, in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams\/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

If she hadn\u2019t stood up to them, she said, things could have escalated with some other woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they had not tried to kiss me, if they had not tried to set me on fire, this wouldn\u2019t have ended where it did,\u201d she said. \u201cThe problem wasn\u2019t that they were racially derogatory. The problem is they were physically assaultive. They invaded my space sexually. They were 360 degrees of wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

The charges against Santiago and James are being prosecuted as hate crimes, officials said.<\/p>\n

The woman, who also took video of them, said she felt compelled to stand up to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the reasons I chose to step forward is because I am an older woman,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat if a 19-year-old woman had to go through this. She doesn\u2019t have the same life experience as me. They didn\u2019t start off burning people. They started trolling and doing things. But this time they burned somebody, so what comes next? How much more are we going to allow them to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The internet trolls livestream videos of themselves appearing to harass everyday New Yorkers, provoking outrage, and often finding themselves being thrown out of apartment buildings, bodegas and other establishments.<\/p>\n

For both suspects, the Thursday arrests were their first run-in with the law, cops said.<\/p>\n

\"MichaelMichael Santiago is pictured in police custody leaving the NYPD’s Midtown South Precinct stationhouse on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026, in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams\/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

The duo has about 1,670 subscribers on YouTube<\/a>, 1,400 followers on Kick and just 295 followers on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Despite the hate speech, the social worker said the incident is beyond racial or political for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Republicans are all saying he\u2019s a Democrat,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not into that. I believe in families, I believe families should be able to walk down any block in New York City and be OK.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman whose boots were burned by a pair of MAGA-loving Internet bloggers during a racist tirade in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[262,263,266,85,267,75,9,24,264,12,56,63,261,65,64,265],"class_list":{"0":"post-148986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-city","9":"tag-county","10":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-manhattan","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-new-york-county","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-nyc-crime","21":"tag-nyc-headlines","22":"tag-nyc-news","23":"tag-sub-county-region"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}