:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63280231/shutterstock_1020723328.0.jpg)
A former bartender at Deep Ellum’s High and Tight Barbershop has been fired from his job and charged with assault after a Dallas woman was violently assaulted on video.
Austin Shuffield has been charged with “assault causing bodily injury and interference with an emergency call,” related to the incident, according to the Dallas Morning News. Dallas police allege that Shuffield is the man in the video of the brutal assault, which shows an woman being punched in the face repeatedly by a man with a gun on his hip. Police say that the violence began when Shuffield asked the woman to move her car from a nearby spot.
In a statement posted to its Facebook page, High & Tight Barbershop says that it fired Shuffield after speaking with police. “We do not stand behind the actions that took place and hope that the full weight of the law comes down on this incident,” the post reads. “We have tried to approach this situation the best as we possibly can.” Despite that statement, a number of one-star reviews of the shop have been submitted via Facebook, telling customers to stay away because the shop hires “racist women abusers.”
In the hours after the video was made public by multiple news outlets and activist Shaun King, Shuffield’s own personal Facebook page has been flooded with thousands of comments from people calling him a “woman beater” and sharing screenshots of him using racist language. “I hope you rot in jail,” reads one comment, while others posted what they believed to be Shuffield’s home address and phone number.
In an interview with WFAA, Shuffield’s alleged victim said that she made a “simple mistake,” and was trying to let a friend out at Deep Ellum Hostel after accidentally driving down Elm Street the wrong way. When she was confronted by the man in the video, Lee says that she reached for her phone to call for help, but he knocked the phone out of her hand. “Watching that video literally makes me cry. All I could do was try and protect myself,” she told the TV station. “He literally sat there and beat me like a man.”
