A Louisiana man is accused of attacking a group of black women both verbally and physically during a seemingly unprovoked incident. Josh Jambon, 51, reportedly hurled racial slurs at the three employees of Metric Engineering, before allegedly striking one woman and spitting in the face of 29-year-old Brandi Worley. Worley captured part of the incident on her camera phone, after Jambon reportedly struck one of her co-workers.
Jambon confronted the women who were working as debris assessors, demanding to know who was in charge. When one of the Worley’s co-workers told the man that the supervisor was not on the scene yet, he flew into a fit of rage, according to Worley.
“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,” Worley said of one of her co-workers. “They passed words, and he ended up hitting her in her head and caused her helmet to fall off.”
The trio was working with a crew of around six men, all white. “The white men were just standing around watching,” Worley said of her co-workers, who allowed the incident to continue. Eventually one of the women called the police, who arrested Jambon after seeing Worley’s video. Though the involved parties all rode to the station, Jambon was released shortly after their statements were released.
“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,” Worley added.
In his defense, Jambon said he had “a bad day.” While he acknowledged that he had spit at Worley, he denied striking the other woman. He mentioned his brother’s recent cancer diagnosis, his business woes as a result of the hurricanes, and the fact that the majority of his employees are black.
“I offended myself, it was a horrible day,“ he told The Grio. “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.”
However, while Jambon hopes for reconciliation, Worley doesn’t want to hear it. “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…”
