Sports Bar Owner Allegedly Gets Death Threats After Filipino American Teen is Assaulted Outside in SF

Sports Bar Owner Allegedly Gets Death Threats After Filipino American Teen is Assaulted Outside  in SFSports Bar Owner Allegedly Gets Death Threats After Filipino American Teen is Assaulted Outside  in SF
The owner of a sports bar in San Francisco has denied anti-Asian accusations after an 18-year-old Filipino American was attacked outside the family-owned establishment.
What happened: Sofia Enguillado, the victim’s mother, posted a video on TikTok on Sunday claiming that her son was assaulted outside Gino and Carlo in the neighborhood of North Beach, according to KPIX5.
  • Enguillado’s son was reportedly sitting in the outside area of the bar while waiting for his parents to return with pizza.
  • The bar owner, Frank Rossi, approached the teenager and asked him to leave after learning he was underage.
  • “By the way it sounded, he said, ‘Get the f— out of here, you don’t belong here,’ that’s what he said, and I cannot forget those words,” Enguillado’s son told KPIX5. “That’s traumatizing to me.”
  • After the teenager refused to leave, a bystander approached him and punched his face.
  • Enguillado claimed it took officers two hours to arrest the assailant, who is being charged with assault and battery.
Denying anti-Asian accusations: Rossi claims that the teenager was asked to leave because of his age, not his race.
  • “‘You have to leave this area, you are not allowed in this area, this is our area. It’s considered inside the bar, even though it’s outside, it’s like a bar. You cannot – you’re under 21,’” Rossi allegedly told Enguillado’s son.
  • Rossi added that he “went nuts” when the bystander — who is also a patron of the bar — punched the teenager.
  • “I could not believe he did it,” Rossi said. “There was no threat, no threat. I was completely caught off guard by it.”
The aftermath: Rossi allegedly received death threats after the incident was shared online. Enguillado’s video went viral on TikTok, gaining more than 849,000 views as of this writing.
  • Rossi’s business was also bombarded with negative reviews on Yelp, which prompted the review site to disable its review system for the page.
  • “While racism has no place on Yelp and we unequivocally reject racism in any form, all reviews on Yelp must reflect an actual first-hand consumer experience (even if that means disabling the ability for users to express points of view we might agree with),” the review site said.
  • “I want to say that they’re mistaken, their son shouldn’t have been hit,” the bar owner said in a message to Enguillado and her family. “[The arrested man] doesn’t work for us, he never did work for us. He’s just a customer. Sorry it happened, but it wasn’t racism at all, or a hate crime against Asians.”
  • Officers claim they do not have any evidence that proves the incident was motivated by hate.
  • Nelson Lum, a retired SFPD sergeant and SF Asian Police Officers Association member, voiced how in the 20 years he’d covered that area, he hadn’t responded to any calls at Gino and Carlo that were racism or hate incident related.
Feature Image via @sweetfaceciara173
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