A white woman dubbed “Sesame Place Sallie” has been banned from the children’s water park on the outskirts of Philadelphia after video showed her cursing and grabbing at a Black mother in line Monday.
A spokeswoman for the Sesame Place amusement park in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, called the woman’s behavior “unacceptable” in a statement to Atlanta Black Star Thursday.
“This guest was immediately removed, never given tickets to return, and has been permanently banned from the park,” the spokeswoman said.
Zaafirah Moore, the mother involved in the incident, recorded video of the encounter as it was unfolding. She posted that video to Instagram the same day, and by Thursday, it had been viewed more than 9,500 times.
Moore told the Philadelphia Tribune on Wednesday that the confrontation began when a white child repeatedly touched a young Black girl’s hair.
That’s when someone who appeared to be related to the girl asked the other child to stop, and it attracted the attention of the woman Moore argued with.
Both women started cursing at each other “in very loud voices,” Moore told the Tribune. Then Moore did something that gained the white woman’s attention.
“I asked them if they would stop cursing in front of all of these children and that is when she started cursing at me,” Moore said. “I guess she thought that we were with the girl because we are Black. But I had never seen her or the woman she was with before in my life.”‘
The video Moore recorded started with her asking the white woman to “say it again.”
It’s unclear what Moore was referring to, but the woman responded by giving Moore the middle finger and saying “here, here here” repeatedly.
“Acting like this around all these kids, this is terrible,” Moore said. “This is horrible.”
Moore can then be heard on the video saying, “She told me to go back to where you came from.”
Then the white woman told her to “f–k yourself, you b—h.”
That’s when she reached toward Moore’s phone, and the camera footage got shaky.
The white woman screamed, “Don’t take no pictures of me.”
Moore responded, “She’s trying to assault me. Don’t touch me again.”
At that point, a child can be heard crying in the background, and the woman continued cursing.
“Get your f—–g phone away from me,” she said.
At that point, the camera was no longer focused on the screaming woman’s face, and several people watching the encounter can be heard making muffled noises.
“Who is she to take pictures of me,” the white woman yelled.
“Who are you to tell me to go back to where I came from,” Moore responded.
Just as a witness to the encounter told the women to “stop talking to each other,” the footage abruptly ended.
Sesame Place apologized for the now-banned woman’s behavior in its statement.
“The Sesame Place family deeply regrets that any park guest would experience this type of behavior in our park or anywhere else,” the company’s spokeswoman said. “We are in contact with the guests and are working to address their concerns to ensure that they feel welcome and safe at Sesame Place.”
