An Ohio couple spoke out Monday about a viral TikTok showing a woman going on a homophobic rant and hurling offensive comments at them at a Starbucks in Miami.
Cassie Urry and Lorrin Skrbec were grabbing coffee before their cruise vacation on March 6 at the Starbucks off Coral Way and 27th Avenue when the verbal attack happened.
"It was a lot, like, I've never had anyone speak to me that way," Skrbec said. "So it was extremely surprising."
"We just tried to stay calm because there was no point in escalating with her," Urry said.
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The two, who define their relationship as a queer relationship, said the unidentified woman was spewing offensive and racist comments toward other minorities, including Black and Asian customers.
"And that's when I spoke up and was like, that's not OK, don't talk to people that way. It's extremely inappropriate," Skrbec said.
That's when the couple said the woman turned on them with the homophobic remarks, saying lesbians "touch children" and are "all evil."
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Urry posted the interaction on her TikTok, where it garnered over 470,000 likes and nearly 19,000 comments in two days. The video was also reposted to Twitter, where it was viewed over 4.6 million times.
"I've come face to face with pretty indirectly silly things — like people taking pictures or videos or point us out or things like that — that really you just brush off your shoulder, but this is what I would say was the most direct and in our face that it's ever been, so both of us were in shock," Urry said.
At the end of the video, the manager starts to get involved, but the couple said they had to rush off to their cruise ship before the situation could get resolved. Miami Police confirmed they responded to the Starbucks for a disturbance.
"Upon the officer arrival, it appears that the parties had been separated without further incident. The officer was able to make contact with the female and instructed her to leave the premises and safely crossed her across the street without any other issue," Miami Police's statement said in part.
A Starbucks spokesperson told NBC 6 that they're aware of what happened, saying the company doesn't tolerate any form of discrimination in its stores.
"Behavior like this is not tolerated and this customer is no longer welcome in any of their stores," the spokesperson said.
The couple said they decided to share the video, in part to remind people that hatred like this does exist.
"A lot of people are under the impression that we have come so far in our progress for the LGBTQ community," Urry said. "And while that is true, I think that people don't always believe other people when they say that we do still face discrimination and there still are people out there spreading these messages towards us."
