As we previously reported, the woman who told a 911 operator there was an ‘African American man threatening my life’ on Monday after Christian Cooper simply asked her to put her dog on a leash while walking in Central Park, has been fired from her investment firm at Franklin Templeton.
The victim, Christian Cooper, 57, who is not related to Amy Cooper, 41, is speaking out to share what was going through his mind during the Monday incident. While speaking with The New York Daily News, Christian, who filmed her telling cops there’s “an African American man threatening my life,” said he can’t really see how her firing “addresses the underlying racial issues.” He went on to explain that it doesn’t solve a wider issue of what’s going on in New York as well as the United States as a whole.
“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” Christian told the new site on Tuesday. “I can’t see how that addresses the underlying issues. I think it’s important to move beyond this instance and this one individual, adding that “too much focus has been put on her when it really is about the underlying issues that have plagued this city and this country for centuries. Racial issues.” Christan said that despite Amy’s actions, he felt he couldn’t judge whether she truly is racist but suggested the action she took on Monday was definitely a sign of using her white privilege and possibly racism.
“Where she went was a racist place. That action was racist. Does that make her a racist? I can’t answer that. Only she can with what she does going forward,” Christian continued to NYDN. He added, “Maybe she was trying to gain an advantage. She went there, and she needs to reflect on what she did.”
As the Daily Mail reports, Amy was earning up to an estimated $170,000 per year until the company came to the decision to let her go following an internal investigation into the footage.
The company said in a statement,
“Following our internal review of the incident in Central Park yesterday, we have made the decision to terminate the employee involved, effective immediately,’ the company tweeted. “We do not tolerate racism of any kind at Franklin Templeton.”
Since Amy’s firing, she said her life has been destroyed and is now receiving death threats. Christian, also said the threats from angry social media users were not helping the fight to change the criminal justice system.
“I’m very upset she’s getting death threats. That’s antithetical to the appropriate response,” Christian said. The good man added, “If you’re upset that she put my life in danger by trying to bring the cops down on a black man, then how can you turn around and make a death threat? That makes no sense. It’s downright awful.”
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