(Screen shot from video)
The white contractor in Ohio who followed a black man home and called him the N-word in a road rage incident-gone-racist is referring to his behavior as an “awful mistake”…now that the racist rant ended his business and, according to him, “ruined my life.”
As previously reported, Jeffrey Whitman, owner of Uriah’s Heating and Cooling in Powell, was driving his company van last Tuesday in Columbus when he accused another driver of cutting him off and followed the driver, Charles Lovett, for nearly two miles to his home — where Lovett filmed the contractor’s ensuing racist tirade.
“It was an awful mistake and obviously I don’t know how to explain it, and it’s ruined my life and it’s ruined my family’s life,” Whitman told a Columbus Dispatch reporter via voicemail on Thursday, two days after the video was posted to Facebook and went viral.
“I’m out of business, I’m completely out, I’m done, I’ll never work in Columbus again,” he said. “This has completely and thoroughly ruined my life.”
The voicemail ended at that point, according to the paper, but Whitman called back on Friday to claim he’s not a bigot. He simply chose the wrong words in confronting Lovett about being “rude.”
“I was just trying to address the rudeness,” Whitman explained.
He also provided a phone number for a woman he urged a reporter to call as a “character witness.”
“I just don’t understand the intensity of the hate,” said Whitman, adding that the incident has led to harassment of his 85-year-old mother and his 25-year-old daughter.
Whitman’s Yelp profile was also left in shambles following video of his klan-like behavior, with one reviewer writing: “Service was amazing, he brought his own cross, lighter fluid and hood.”
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