RCMP looking for suspect in racist attack at Cloverdale Rodeo

RCMP in Surrey are trying to identify a woman captured on video this weekend allegedly hurling racial slurs and attacking a protester at the Cloverdale Rodeo.

The YouTube video, posted on Saturday, shows a woman dressed in a blue sweater approaching someone holding a protest sign during the 67th annual event, which is regularly protested because of animal rights concerns.

In the video, the woman is heard calling the protester racist names and using profanity.

“I’m a f**king racist,” she said. “I’ll blow your f**king country up.”

The woman then appears to attack her after the protester calls out: “Come here, hit me.”

Shukey, who posted the incident to the video sharing website, said that her alleged assailant didn’t like a sign she was carrying that read “Rodeo: where coward boys have fun.” She declined to give her last name.

Shukey said she protests the rodeo every year and was surprised at the woman’s reaction.

“She said that the rodeo is her heritage, and I’m protesting it and I’m not even from Canada, and that’s the whole thing that started the racist remarks,” she said. “I guess it really upset her.”

But Shukey didn’t expect the incident to physically escalate the way it did.

“As you can see at the end of the video she spits in my face, then I got grabbed by my hair, thrown on the ground, got kicked, punched, and one of her friends…was hitting me in the back of the head as well.”

She said she tried to fight back but two others joined in the attack. A fellow protester came to her aid and they got into a car, where Shukey reported the incident to police.

Surrey RCMP say they were contacted shortly after the incident and are now trying to determine who the woman is.

“The racial slurs that we can hear in the video are quite concerning to us,” said Cpl. Bert Paquet. “But from a police perspective, we’re investigating what happens at the end of the video and following the end of the video, which is allegations of assault, not only involving the female we see, but also potentially two or three other people.”

Shukey admitted to possibly egging on the woman while she was recording the attack.

A woman claiming to be the one shown in the video called CTV News Tuesday, saying the activist started the fight before the camera was on, hitting her with an umbrella.

She said she now feels bad about the incident, but she’s not interested in talking to police.

With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Lisa Rossington