Newly released surveillance footage shows the Democratic Georgia lawmaker who claimed she was told to “go back where you came from” confronting a man inside a Publix grocery store.
State Rep. Erica Thomas later walked back her claim and a witness—an employee at Publix—told police officers that Thomas actually uttered the words herself.
The man who Thomas accused of racism came forward and identified himself as Eric Sparkes, a Democrat and staunch opponent of President Donald Trump. In a viral confrontation outside Publix with cameras rolling, Sparkes asked Thomas to repeat her claim about what he allegedly said.
“Do you understand you’re a liar? Me telling you to ‘go back where you came from?'” he asked her. “Did I say that? Did I say it? Is it on video?”
“What did you say to me?” Thomas responded. Sparkes then said he called her an expletive but not uttering the statement.
The footage from Publix cameras shows Thomas in the express line inside the store, wearing a pink “Planned Parenthood” shirt, with her daughter.
Sparkes is seen coming into the frame from the left side and pointing at the express line. He told reporters he was telling Thomas that she had too many items to be in the express line.
Thomas then answers him before moving towards him as he walks back. “She blows up,” he told a police officer outside the store. “I don’t remember what she said, she said a few words,” he added. “She says I told her to ‘go back where you came from.’ She’s making it this Donald Trump thing, I’m anti-Trump.”
Sparkes was referring to Trump telling several Democratic congresswomen who he said have been displaying anti-American behavior to “go back” to their countries to help fix the “totally broken and crime-infested places” before returning to the United States to “show us how it is done.”
The missives, posted on Twitter on July 14, ignited a wave of condemnation from Democrats and activists, though Trump said later he was just saying that people who don’t like America should leave.
At 11pm on @cbs46 hear a #Publix manager and witness give her account of the grocery story confrontation between @itsericathomas & Eric Sparkes. PREVIEW⬇️ pic.twitter.com/jkNR4dQmvs
— Brittany Edney (@BrittanyEdney) July 25, 2019
The account of a Publix employee speaking to police was also released on Wednesday by local broadcaster CBS 46.
“I got closer there, I heard him call her ignorant. And then she said, ‘If you’re not happy you can leave the store.’ And he called her ignorant again, and she said, ‘You can go back to where you came from,” the employee told an officer.
“That’s what he said to her?” the officer responded.
“No, she said that to him. ‘You can go back to where you came from’ to him,” the employee said. “He called her ignorant.”
“So he didn’t say, ‘Go back to where you came from?'” the officer asked.
“No, I didn’t hear that from him at all,” the employee said.
Thomas later walked back her claim, telling reporters: “He said, ‘go back,’ you know, those types of words. I don’t wanna say he said ‘go back to your country,’ or ‘go back to where you came from,’ but he was making those types of references, is what I remember.”
Sparkes told reporters he is of Cuban descent.
