Woman caught in racist rant on LAX bus says 'brain injury' partly to blame

The woman caught on camera aboard an LAX shuttle bus hurling racists insults at a young Indian American family has started lobbing her own accusations about the incident, including that a brain injury she suffered last year is partly to blame for her agitation, according to multiple reports.  

The incident, according to Pervez Taufiq whose family was the target of the hateful remarks, occurred on a United Airlines shuttle bus at LAX the week of the Thanksgiving holiday.  

A well-known photographer, Taufiq recorded the incident as he, his wife and kids returned from a long week of travel and the woman, identified by the Daily Mail as 64-year-old Arlene Bunch, began telling his two young sons to shut up.  

“That really made me snap,” Taufiq told KTLA. “I said, ‘You can’t talk to my sons that way.’” 

In footage of the upsetting tirade, Bunch is seen flipping the family off, calling them “f*****g crazy,” “tandoori stinky” and saying Indian people “are gross, man.” 

“You are racist toward me, I’m American,” she told Taufiq who was born in the U.S.  

The licensed California real-estate broker has since claimed in an interview that she was pushed on the flight by Taufiq and that the situation escalated when she and her husband and the young family boarded the bus, Daily Mail reported.  

“[They] were aggressive when we loaded the shuttle,” she now says, and claims Taufiq called her a white trash b***h. “None of that is in the video. Most people know me as a very kind, calm person, but since the brain injury, I can get agitated very easily.”  

Bunch apparently suffered serious injuries in an explosion caused by a propane leak at her Mammoth Lakes home on March 22, 2023, according to Daily Mail.  

Despite her own struggles, the 64-year-old doesn’t appear to have any remorse for what she’s seen saying and doing to Taufiq, his wife and children in the now viral video.  

“Supposedly, they are first class. Obviously, with no class and look at the way they’re dressed...they’re white trash,” the UK outlet reports her saying.  

As for Taufiq, who describes his family as proud Americans, he told KTLA he was bothered that only one person on the bust spoke up for his family before a United employee asked Bunch to get off the bus.  

“The takeaway for us is definitely if you see something say something, try to stop it,” he said. “Do your best because you could be next, and you want everyone to be in your corner right when it happens.”