GRAND ISLE, LA – A 29-year-old woman who was cursed at, called the n-word and spat on by a Louisiana homeowner will return to work this week, but Brandi Worley says she remains shaken by the incident last Tuesday. Meanwhile, the man who did it said he “blanked,” as the result of a really bad day.
“We were outside and we were cleaning up a one lane street,” said Worley, who works as a debris assessor for Metric Engineering, a FEMA contractor in Grand Isle. “You had whole houses worth of debris set on the side of the curb for crews to clean up. It was a scene like [Hurricane Katrina]; just miles and miles of debris, wreckage from houses piled up.”
Worley said she and two other black women were working with a crew of about a half dozen men, all of whom were white. The narrow road only allowed one truck at a time to make its way through the houses and debris, and so when the truck was hauling a load away, the crews had perhaps 20 minutes of downtime in the searing heat. She said she and the other workers were resting underneath a tree when an angry homeowner emerged from his property and began yelling at the crew.
Worley said the man, Josh Jambon, 51, began askign “who was in charge and why was there trash on his property. One of the ladies told him nicely our supervisor is not out here yet, [and] we’ll let you know when he comes out here.” But she said, Jambon began yelling and cursing at the crew, yelling, “look at the lazy pack of ni**ers sitting under the tree!”
“I was floored,” Worley told theGrio, “but I didn’t say anything.” She said one of the two other black women asked the man not to call the other African-American women names, but that he continued.
“He went on this tirade where he started calling us a bunch of lazy ni**ers and b*tches and she kept asking him not to call us that and he got in her face, and they passed words, and he ended up hitting her in her head and caused her helmet to fall off,” Worley said the second black woman came to her colleague’s aid, and was as struck as well. Worse, said Worley, “I was standing there watching it and the white men were just standing around watching.” None of the male workers did anything to stop the abuse.
“Nobody said, ‘man, stop, don’t do that, this is wrong — don’t hit those women,’ she said.”I was standing in the background and he was going off, cursing and [the two other black women] were arguing with him and he was calling us ni**ers and one of the black girls was getting ready call the police.” That’s when Worley says she took out her cell phone and began filming the incident.
“After I started filming,” Worley said, adding that it was difficult for her to retell the story, “he caught me filming and he came directly towards me, trying to get the phone from me, cursing, saying, ‘give me the camera, b*tch, and when I wouldn’t let go, that’s when he spit in my face.”
“I didn’t provoke him in any way,” she said. “Even on the video you could hear me pleading for him not to touch me, because I had already seen him hit those other women.”
Worley said the police arrived, and didn’t seem prepared to arrest Jambon, until she produced her cell phone video and gave it to a female officer. “And I have to give her credit that as soon as I showed her the video she arrested him,” Worley said of the officer, although she notes that Jambon spent very little time at the police station.
“At the police station, we weren’t even there fifteen minutes,” she said. “The ink wasn’t even dry on our statements and he was walking out [of the station] free, with the police chief like they were best buddies.”
Attacker “had a very bad day”
Jambon doesn’t deny cursing or spitting at Worley, though he does deny striking the other women. Reached by phone by theGrio Monday, Jambon said the incident was the result of stress, and does not reflect his character.
“I just came through a horrible hurricane with 14 properties covered with water,” Jambon said. “I came from my brother being diagnosed with liver cancer that morning, one of my vessels colliding with a guy’s platform with two injuries … I’m very sorry about what happened. I was very stressed out.”
Jambon said that in a small town with “just 1,270 people,” everyone knows everyone, including the police chief. His company, Jambon Boat Rentals, has black employees, and he said his staff know that the person on that tape is not representative of him.
“I have offices all around the world and the majority of people I employ were all black,” Jambon said. “They’ve all come to me since then and said they know it’s not me, I just blanked.”
Jambon said he is not trying to “get out of the charges” against him, that he wants to “do the right thing and get what’s coming to” him, and he says he would like to meet face to face with Worley and apologize to her.
“I’m not looking for racial problems in the United States,” he said. “Don’t you think we’re divided enough right now? I know the media likes to take things like this and run with them… I’d like to apologize to the person and that’s it. From what I read on her profile she’s a very educated person and done very well with kids.”
He says the incident has “offended him.”
“I offended myself,” he said. “It was a horrible day. I mean 14 properties going under water. The company that was there had just pulled the entire wiring service out of my personal home on Grand Isle. I was under the stress. I just came through the BP oil spill — that is ground zero for the BP oil spill, I’ve lost tremendous amount of money. Before that it was hurricane Ike, Gustav…” But he quickly added, “there’s no reason for me to go off on anybody, there’s no excuse. I blanked. I was apologizing to the chiefs, the deputies, I apologized to the owner of the company. I wanted to apologize to the girl herself, but they didn’t want me to. I’m not trying to get out of any charges. I’m trying to do the right thing and get what’s coming to me. I didn’t not strike anybody. I did spit at her camera, and at her, I did not strike anybody.”
Worley said she hasn’t slept well since the incident, which she called “so humiliating.” And she remains “hurt” in her words, by the failure of the men she was working with to come to her and the other black women’s defense.
“”They didn’t say anything. I guess their reaction was: ‘I’m not in it. They’re talking to y’all. He didn’t say anything racial towards us.’ Towards the end of the video you even hear him saying, ‘and there’s not a man out here that’s going to do anything about it.'”
Asked if she is angry with those half dozen men — her coworkers — Worley said, “I don’t even know if I can say angry. Upset, hurt, disappointed. You think that as a woman, you’d think that the gentleman[ly] thing would be to say, don’t hit those women. Don’t hurt them, that’s not right. It wasn’t even a black or white thing for me, it was a human thing. Like, where is the integrity?”
But Worley is proud that she stepped forward to help the other two women, Norma Savoy and Madonna Reid, who Worley didn’t know before starting the job in Grand Isle.
“I was out there and to look at the other two women; I’m looking to them and I’m saying to myself they look like good people. Try to help. Try to do something. Film it, record it, somebody will believe me.”
Worley said she is not ready to talk about an apology.
“I didn’t even sleep the night that it happened,” she said. “I think I was exhausted the next day, mentally, physically, spiritually, because you know there’s racism out there but you don’t expect anything like that to happen, because you’re not racist, you’re not brought up that way. And then for something like that to happen…”
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