Romanian Thug Swings Elderly Woman

Submission 34,528

Overview

Romanian Thug Swings Elderly Woman refers to a video clip of a Romanian youth grabbing and swinging an elderly woman by her collar in an outskirt village of Bucharest, Romania. Upon being shared on Facebook by the bully himself in April 2014, the footage quickly went viral in the Romanian social media and overseas, eventually prompting a police investigation by the authorities.

Background

According to the Daily Mail^[2], a video was uploaded to Facebook on April 3rd, 2014, which showed a young man harassing an elderly woman outside of a bar in the village Jilava near Bucharest, Romania (shown below). In the video, the elderly woman is shown being grabbed by the collar of her dressing gown before being lifted off of the ground and spun in circles, during which she can be heard yelling in distress. Shortly after letting the woman escape, the same man runs up to her again and spins her a second time.

Notable Developments

On April 4th, Redditor ch0ding submitted a YouTube-hosted version to the /r/videos^[1] subreddit, where it gathered more than 1,900 up votes and 1000 comments in the next seven hours. The video was immediately removed for violating YouTube’s terms of service, though not long before another version was subsequently re-uploaded to eBaum's World,^[5] where it accumulated upwards of 53,000 views and 250 comments in the following five hours.

Identity of the Bully

On April 4th, the Daily Mail^[2] reported on the social media outrage in reaction the controversial video, noting that Facebook users were quickly able to identify the bully as a Romanian man named Geo Jitat.

Jitat's Response

After being identified, Jitat commented on a Facebook uploaded of the video and criticized those who denounced his actions:

"Why the f*** do you write these comments, you slaves? I’ll p*** on you! What the f*** is it with these comments? It was just a joke. She wasn’t dying."^[5]

Also on April 4th, the polish news website Sfora^[4] highlighted a photo from Jitat’s Facebook page in which is shown posing with the same woman with the caption “That’s me with my girlfriend” (shown below).

Police Investigation

A spokesperson for Romanian police announced that they were attempting to identify all parties involved with in the incident and would be consulting prosecutors to determine if charges would be filed.

"We want to know when this video was shot, where it was shot and who the people were in the video. A report will then be prepared for prosecutors who will decide what action to take."^[2]