Emelia Holden, a 21-year-old college student who works as a waitress at a pizzeria in Savannah, Georgia felt a customer graze her buttocks. A protest would have been expected, but not an actual body slam.
The waitress reacted with startling speed, grabbing him by the collar and putting him in a chokehold before throwing him to the ground.
The 21-year-old said: “I don’t care who you are. You have no right to disrespect me,”
The culprit tried to defend himself by pleading that he was just trying to “push her out of the way” and saying: “Oh, I’d barely touched you,” according to Emelia - but the CCTV footage says otherwise.
Emelia told CBS how the incident unfolded: "I took someone's order and I was getting ready to set them up and then I just felt it.
"I was like, 'nope, that's not going to happen' and turned around and took the guy down."
She was astonished by her own strength: "I'm 115 pounds. I didn't know I could do that. I guess I just had the right stance for it and I did it."
The manager of the restaurant told police he had witnessed the incident and provided them with the surveillance footage of the pizzeria. The video went viral after she shared it with family members and a relative posted it online, the story went viral this week on Reddit.
Savannah police then charged the culprit with a misconduct of sexual assault.
This kind of sexual assault is very prevalent in countries like Bangladesh and other South Asian countries as well, where getting on a public transport or walking down the street for a woman is a trial and tribulation. Women who protest sexual harassment publicly are often urged by curious onlookers to forget and move on. In some cases, if a woman physically defends herself from sexual assault, she is often targeted by mobs.
