(KGTV) - Video making waves across social media shows a woman apparently on the phone with police reporting a young girl for selling water on a San Francisco sidewalk over the weekend.
The woman, identified by multiple media outlets as medical marijuana business owner Alison Ettel, is shown in the clip on the phone with police after she saw a girl selling bottled water on a sidewalk outside of an apartment building near the San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park stadium on June 23.
As she recorded, the girl’s mother is heard telling Ettel: “This woman don't want a little girl selling sell some water. She's calling the police on an 8-year-old girl. You can hide all you want but the whole world is going to see you boo."
Ettel, while crouching behind a small wall, looks directly at the camera and says on the phone that the girl is selling the water “illegally” and does not have a permit.
The video has sparked outrage, with many calling the incident racially motivated because Ettel is white and the girl is bi-racial. Ettel told the Huffington Post that she was merely pretending to call police and there was “no racial component to it.”
Ettel explained that she could hear and was bothered by constant screaming “about what they were selling” from her office window and that prompted her to get on the phone.
While she told the Huffington Post she feels “horrible and heart-wrenched” about the situation, the clip nevertheless went viral -- with Ettel dubbed #PermitPatty.
The girl’s mother, Erin Austin, told ABC’s Good Morning America that her daughter Jordan was selling the bottled water in hopes of raising enough money to go to Disneyland.
On Monday, Bay Area TV station KRON reported a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland announced it would stop selling products from Ettel's company.
Magnolia Wellness said they would no longer carry Treatwell Tinctures, which are cannabis products for pets.
In a statement posted on Instagram, Magnolia Wellness said: "Treatwell was one of our best-selling products but to us, integrity is always before profits."
The incident comes nearly two months after another Bay Area confrontation where -- in a strikingly similar situation -- a white woman called police on a black family for having a barbecue at Oakland’s Lake Merritt.
Video of that incident went viral, with the woman becoming known as #BBQBecky.
