A San Francisco woman dubbed “Permit Patty” claims she is facing death threats after a video showed her appearing to call the police on an eight-year-old girl selling water.

In a video posted online, Alison Ettel is seen standing on the street with a phone to her ear. The girl’s mother, Erin Austin, captured her confrontation with Ettel, saying from behind the camera, “This woman don’t want to let a little girl sell some water. She’s calling the police on an eight-year-old little girl.”

In the video, Ettel crouches behind a cement wall to avoid being filmed. “The whole world is going to see you,” Austin says as the pair meet face-to-face.

“Yeah, and illegally selling water without a permit,” Ettel says into the phone.

The two women then dispute who owns the property where the girl was selling the water.

Austin’s video has been viewed more than 1.2 million times since it was posted on Saturday. Tweets from a woman who identified herself as the girl’s cousin include the hashtag #PermitPatty, and a video showing the child appearing to practice her sales pitch standing next to a cooler.

Austin told USA Today that she recently lost her job, and her daughter was selling the water in an effort to raise money to go to Disneyland.

In an interview with NBC’s Today show, Ettel said she was working on the upper floor of her home at the time, and the girl’s repeated sales pitch was disruptive and loud.

“I tried to be polite, but I was stern. I said, ‘Please. I’m trying to work. You’re screaming. You’re yelling. People have open windows. It’s a hot day. Can you please keep it down?’” Ettel said, claiming that she only confronted Austin, not her daughter.

Austin tells a different story.

“She never asked us to be quiet. She just came out and directly demanded to see a permit to sell water from an eight-year-old,” she told NBC. “That woman thought that she could use her white privilege, and it didn’t work.”

Thousands of comments followed on social media, with some accusing Ettel, who is white, of acting out of racial prejudice against a black child.

This is the universal white ppl calling the cops face,” said one Twitter user of a meme created from the video.

Others applauded the girl’s entrepreneurial spirit, and encouraged her to sell water in their neighbourhoods.

Ettel said the backlash against her has included a barrage of “horrible images and death threats.”