Woman filmed hurling racial abuse at Latino family and store employee in New Jersey

A woman at a New Jersey department store was caught on camera hurling racial abuse at a Latino family and an Asian employee.

"You got an Indian waiting on an Indian, that's what it is," the infuriated shopper waiting in a long queue at the store's cash counter said, according to a video posted on social media sites by a bystander. "Send them back to their own (expletive) country."

Simoni LoVano Scirocco wrote on Facebook that the incident took place on Sunday (4 June) at the New Brunswick, New Jersey Sears store.

"Racist woman today at Sears harassing latino family and cashiers. She also questioned if they had green cards afterwards. My blood was boiling," he wrote.

LoVano told CBS New York that the angry woman mistook the Latino family as Asian because of their brown skin colour.

The cashier at the store was an Asian and that apparently provoke her to target the store employees as well as the family.

"Really, she was just looking at the color of the skin," LoVano said. "They both have brown skin and it was very clear that the family was Latino, and they were also speaking Spanish. And the cashier was Indian. Just that fact in of itself shows how isolated she is in terms of reality.

"My regret is that I didn't speak up when it all happened. Everyone tried to quiet down the situation, but nobody really addressed the issue and addressed the racism," LoVano said, adding that next time he witnesses such a thing, he would deal with it differently.