A woman whose boots were burned by a pair of MAGA-loving Internet bloggers during a racist live-streamed tirade in Manhattan told the News she felt violated sexually before the street encounter turned racial, and said getting them off the street will save another victim from dealing with the pain she’s still processing.
“”They just walked up to me,” the 54-year-old social worker said of the Feb.19 assault. “They were strangers and just walked up to me. They just said, ‘You’re beautiful, can I kiss you?’
I said, ‘No’.
He said, ‘If you were my slave, I could kiss you,’ and that’s how it started.”
The victim, 54, fresh off a birthday the day before, said she was picking up a cake in Chelsea to continue the celebration when she clashed with the cretins, one of whom wore a red “Make America Great Again” hat at W. 26th St. and Seventh Ave. She declined to be identified by her full name.
Cops said Michael Santiago, 31, and Michael James, 33, confronted the Black woman and unleashed a slew of racist insults that were caught on camera and posted online.
The duo are known online as “ScrubsNYC,” and their shtick of bizarre arguments they provoke with everyday New Yorkers has brought them a modest 1,740 subscribers on YouTube, 1,400 followers on Kick and just 295 followers on Instagram.
The internet trolls livestream videos of themselves appearing to harass everyday New Yorkers and often finding themselves being thrown out of apartment buildings, bodegas and other establishments.
“I want to f— you right up your n—– a–,” James, who wore a MAGA hat, screamed at the victim, as Santiago recorded. “I want to f— a slave. You’re my slave. You’re my slave.”
Barry Williams/ New York Daily News
Michael James, left, and Michael Santiago are pictured in police custody outside the NYPD Midtown South Precinct station house on Thursday Feb. 26, 2026 in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
At one point, James asked to kiss the victim’s pair of boots. Instead, she said, he knelt down and set one of her boots on fire with a hand-held blowtorch.
The hair on the boots were singed but the flames quickly petered out, a video of the incident shows. Cops say the $89 pair of boots were ruined.
Both men were arrested almost a week later and charged with attempted assault, criminal mischief and menacing, all as hate crimes, as well as aggravated harassment, arson and criminal tampering.
The two suspects live in the same apartment building on the Upper East Side, according to cops.
The social worker said she is still traumatized by the afternoon attack.
“I was shocked. I was very shocked,” she said. “I never heard these words before. No one has ever called me a slave, ever. I’m a very honorable woman. I went to college. At the end of the day, men don’t talk to me like that. These men, telling me to suck their d—-, calling me a slave, calling me a bitch, all of these things,. I’m over a certain age. I’m 54. At my age, I don’t have encounters like that.”
Barry Williams/ New York Daily News
Michael James is pictured in police custody leaving the NYPD’s Midtown South Precinct stationhouse on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026, in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
If she hadn’t stood up to them, she said, things could have escalated with some other woman.
“If they had not tried to kiss me, if they had not tried to set me on fire, this wouldn’t have ended where it did,” she said. “The problem wasn’t that they were racially derogatory. The problem is they were physically assaultive. They invaded my space sexually. They were 360 degrees of wrong.”
The charges against Santiago and James are being prosecuted as hate crimes, officials said.
The woman, who also took video of them, said she felt compelled to stand up to them.
The livestreamers’ video, which was posted online, shows the victim pulling out her own phone in the middle of James’ tirade and recording. “You’re a slave — you’re a slave to my Blackness,” she tells James at one point..
“One of the reasons I chose to step forward is because I am an older woman,” she said. “What if a 19-year-old woman had to go through this. She doesn’t have the same life experience as me. They didn’t start off burning people. They started trolling and doing things. But this time they burned somebody, so what comes next? How much more are we going to allow them to do.”
When cops arrested the pair, James told police, “That is me on the video. I do see myself burning the boot,” according to prosecutors at his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court Friday.
Cops recovered an electric stun gun from Santiago’s backpack.
James was also arraigned on harassment and menacing charges, accused of threatening an ex-girlfriend with a knife in a separate incident.
After his arraignment he told the News, “I’m not denying I was there, but I don’t remember the incident.”
Despite the hate speech, the social worker said the incident is beyond racial or political for her.
“The Republicans are all saying he’s a Democrat,” she said. “I’m not into that. I believe in families, I believe families should be able to walk down any block in New York City and be OK.”
James was back to livestreaming Sunday morning, hyping his release from custody.
