SAN ANTONIO – The owners of Tim’s Oriental Seafood Market said they are still in disbelief after a verbal altercation took place in their store.
“This is real. This is really happening,” said Vanessa Egle, one of the store owners.
Egle and her sister captured the shocking moments on a cellphone camera. The man seen in the video is William Hayward, a candidate for the 35th district of Texas in the U.S. Congress. Egle said a woman, also seen in the video, is his wife.
Egle said the pair are store regulars and entered the family-owned business last Wednesday. Surveillance video showed the two waiting to cash out, and Egle said she overheard them arguing.
She recalled trying to calm them down before Hayward approached her.
“(Hayward) sticks his finger in my face and calls me a ‘stupid, f****** Asian b****. I am a U.S. congressman. Who do you think you’re talking to?’" Egle said she was told.
The couple was asked to leave, but the confrontation continued outside. Egle said she is still in disbelief over the entire incident.
“I was pretty shocked. I was shaken. I was mad,” Egle said.
Hayward issued the following statement:
“It should be noted that I never gave them permission to film me or my wife, the children kept shoving me putting their phones in my face and blocked my car. Again, I must apologize for me from losing my temper over the insults they gave me and my China wife."
Victoria Lackey and her husband were standing in front of the couple when the incident happened.
“Everybody in the store that was there was standing there looking,” she said.
Lackey said the couple had been speaking loudly to each other and criticized customers who were wearing masks in the store.
“You don’t even know what’s going on, and you’re running for Congress, and you’re talking about the government,” Lackey said.
Egle denied Hayward’s allegations, but she hopes he will take ownership of what he said.
“I’m not going to let him say these things without some sort of repercussion. He needs to own what he said,” Egle said.