Police are hunting for a man caught on video slashing a transgender woman’s tires at a Los Angeles gas station and telling her, “You’re lucky I don’t stab you.”
The incident occurred on May 1 at the Arco gas station in the city’s Studio City neighborhood. GiGi Gandy said she was pumping gas when a “visibly agitated” man pulled his car behind hers. “He starts blasting his horn, zero patience in the world,” Gandy told KTLA. Gandy then pulled forward to another gas pump, and the man reportedly followed behind her.
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She said the individual then parked and began talking to another man. Both men reportedly looked at her and laughed. “I’m like, what the [expletive], there are no pumps behind me. He’s just parked behind me. I can see him talking s**t, flipping me off.”
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When Gandy displayed the same gesture to him in return, the man flew into a “rage.” That’s when he allegedly made a U-turn in the parking lot and began his vandalism.
In the video, a bearded, cubbish-bodied man with short brown hair leans over from the open door of his black car and repeatedly stabs the front driver’s side wheel of Gandy’s car until he punctures it. As air audibly whooshes out of the tire, the man looks angrily at Gandy, swears several times, and says, “Yeah, you’re lucky I don’t stab you,” before entering his car, closing the car door, and driving away. A woman sat in his passenger seat.
“I was shaken, and I didn’t know what to do. I froze,” Gandy told the aforementioned news station. “It could have been possibly because I’m transgender. I don’t know. I don’t think you could tell based just off looks, but I do think that it was something that triggered it as well.”
Gandy said she filed a report with the Los Angeles Police Station, adding, “Honestly, I’m traumatized and just want this dealt with.” Arco refused to release the security footage to the news station.
Gandy launched a $1,000 GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign to pay for her car repairs and lost income. The campaign raised $370 as of Friday morning local time.
Transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault, according to a March 2024 study by the Williams Institute at University of California in Los Angeles’ School of Law.
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