A viral video of a man spouting expletives and
racist comments toward an Asian family at a restaurant in Carmel Valley,
California has been identified by multiple publications as a San
Francisco tech CEO.
Multiple publications
identified the man in the video as Michael Lofthouse, CEO of Solid8,
LLC, a San Francisco cloud computing services company founded in 2017.
Lofthouse's LinkedIn account appears to have been deleted, his Twitter account suspended and his Facebook profile removed.
Solid8's website says it provides "IT solutions designed to reduce cost and
improve performance with Cloud Contact Center, Communication, SDWAN
& CyberSecurity." Lofthouse, however, is not listed as the company's
CEO.
USA TODAY reached out to Solid8 for comment.
Jordan
Chan and her family were celebrating her aunt's birthday Saturday when one patron, Lofthouse, at a nearby table began harassing the family.
Chan began recording Lofthouse as he continued harassing her family at Bernardus restaurant in Carmel Valley, California.
The video starts with Lofthouse flipping off Chan after she asked him to repeat what he'd said previously. People at the table can be heard
saying "you need to leave."
After getting up, Lofthouse then says, “You f------ need to leave! You f------ Asian piece of s---!”
A server, in the frame, then immediately yells at him, “No, you do not talk to our guests like that. Get out of here."
In a statement to CBS San Francisco,
which earlier reported the news, Sean Damery, vice president and
general manager of Bernardus said: “This is an extremely unfortunate
situation, however, we are proud of our staff at Lucia in keeping with
Bernardus Lodge’s core values; this incident was handled swiftly and the
diner was escorted off property without further escalation."
"We provide guests with a safe environment for lodging and dining, and extend our sincere apologies to the guests enjoying a birthday celebration on a holiday weekend," Damery added.
With
over 400,000 views already, the backlash prompted viewers to voice their thoughts on the matter. However, some have been reaching out to the wrong Solid8 company in Europe.
"We are
currently receiving huge amounts of emails, calls, and messages from people accusing us of having a CEO that is racist. This is a case of mistaken identity and we are in no way associated with the business in question," Emma Jones, managing director and owner of Solid8 Consulting said.