The white woman caught on tape getting into a physical altercation with a Black female security guard the evening before the Capitol riots lost her job at UMass Hospital. The termination occurred after her daughter went viral for exposing her identity on social media.
On January 5th, Therese Duke and a group of pro-Trump protesters that included other family members were filmed harassing Ashanti Smith, a security guard working at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington D.C.
After Duke made a failed attempt to grab Smith’s phone out of her hand, the woman proceeded to punch Duke in the face once, to dissuade her. Following the incident, her very liberal 18-year-old daughter Helena Duke exposed her on social media.
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“Hi mom remember the time you told me I shouldn’t go to BLM protests bc they could get violent…this you?” Helena teased in the January 7th tweet that quickly amassed almost half a million likes.
She then followed up with another tweet including a set of screenshots captioned, “Hi this is the liberal lesbian of the family who has been kicked out multiple times for her views and for going to BLM protests to care what happens to me.”
In that same tweet, Helena also revealed the names of her uncle Richard Lorenz and her aunt Anne Lorenz.
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Initially, Smith reported that she had been fired for punching Duke and is facing criminal charges. But in a recent interview with CBC Radio show, As It Happens, Helena revealed her mother had also been let go from her job as a healthcare provider at UMass Memorial Health Care hospital in Worcester, Mass. due to the incident.
The 18-year-old explained the termination was “because she does work at a hospital, and she obviously went to a protest with many people and she wasn’t wearing a mask.”
“She actually has been a Democrat her whole life up until the Trump presidency. And it was unsettling seeing how quickly she had changed to a radically right ideology,” Helena continued. “The things that she was saying really didn’t make sense. A lot of them were conspiracy theories, almost a delusional kind of mindset. And I think it was just her belief system entirely was focused around what President Trump was saying.”
A January 8th statement released by UMass Memorial seemingly confirmed Duke’s termination. Although the hospital did not call her out by name, they announced that one of their employees was fired due to their involvement with the protests.
“Over the past 24 hours, we have received numerous expressions of concern through social media regarding a UMass Memorial caregiver who many have been involved in this week’s violent event at the nation’s Capitol,” read the statement. It then clarified, “The employee in question is no longer a part of our organization.”
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