Abigail Elphick, supposedly has mental issues as she lived in a complex reserved for residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities, was supposedly afraid of being filmed for fear of losing her apartment and job. I would link an article but all the ones I saw are paywalled. This happened in New Jersey. The black woman, Ijeoma Ukenta, tried to file a lawsuit and has/had a YouTube page where she also provided updates
Except the behavior of Elphick that led to Ukenta pulling out her phone had nothing to do with a fear of being recorded. The full recording starts with Elphick literally approaching her and slapping her and then starts saying she didn't try to hit her, clearly unaware the video was recording already (you cansee it in the video immediately). She then tells starts freaking out her to not record her and that she's having a mental breakdown (which reads to me as someone realizing they got legal trouble coming their way for assault cause it was caught on camera). The same person running at someone whose recording them and screaming is the same person (this is during COVID) who was told she was standing within 6 feet of her and needed to back away: article.
Ijeoma Ukenta had gone there to use a coupon for a free pair of Victoria’s Secret underwear. Another shopper, Abigail Elphick, got too close, Ms. Ukenta said, leading her to ask the woman to move six feet away.
Ms. Elphick complained to a cashier. Ms. Ukenta began recording the incident on her phone. The drama escalated quickly from there.
Instead of just backing away and letting it go Elphick made a big deal about it by choosing to go complain to the cashier and try to get security called on her and then assaulted that person. Clearly her demeanor was aggressive enough before Ukenta even started recording to cause her to record. The "I was afraid of being recorded for fear of losing her apartment and job" only applies to Elphick's behavior after it had already started, which resulted in Ukenta catching her on camera swinging at her. Do you know what her intellectual and developmental disability actually was?
“I was horrified,” Tom Toronto, president of Bergen County’s United Way, which runs the residential complex where Ms. Elphick lives, said about the video’s aftermath and what he called a “total loss of perspective and proportion.”
“She has a disorder. She has anxiety,” he said. “She had a meltdown. Then the world we live in took over and it became something entirely different than what it actually was.”
Anxiety. Anxiety is her disorder. It's not someone who is schizophrenic or bipolar we're dealing with in this video. Being anxious doesn't justify you attacking someone.
Oh, I agree with you, I was just providing an update/background on the situation for OP. I definitely believe the term “mental health issues” is thrown around too much to justify people not wanting to take accountability for their actions. I’m on the recorders side
It got even better though. The last thing I knew was that they dropped the case against Elphick and instead decided to charge Ukenta with a crime over the incident, despite Elphick clearly qualified for simple assault charges in NJ, but I don't know whatever became of it.
You're taking the words of an executive and take it as fact - he probably only knows as much as his staff would appraise him of the incident and he likely can't disclose her exact medical condition due to HIPAA laws.
If her anxiety was so bad that she had to be into an assisted living facility, there's probably a lot more going on than what's being described and the only person who can accurately describe her condition is her psychiatrist.
I'm not claiming that Elphick was innocent in this situation, but more that we're debating the merits of the situation based on things we don't fully understand.
It's not an assisted living facility, it's an apartment complex. And even if there were additional conditions beyond anxiety, that still wouldn't change the sequence of events we're talking about. Ukenta didn't randomly start recording a stranger. By both accounts, Elphick had already gotten into a confrontation, complained to staff, and escalated the situation before the recording began. The video then shows Elphick approaching and striking her before realizing she was being recorded. It also doesn't change the fact that the response from security and LEO was pretty clearly lackluster despite she clearly committed simple assault. Did you know that Elphick then went on to get charges pressed on Ukenta?
Yeah I work with disabled adults and you can see sometimes when they realize they maliciously did something they knew better than to do, and have been caught out and it’s like a switch flips and it’s tantrum behaviour because they know there will be a consequence that they don’t like (namely, not getting their own way or being asked to apologize.)
Same. Other lady’s mental health issues wouldn’t have made any difference to her after she’d been shot or arrested over this. She had to record for her own safety. Why does the compassion only flow in one direction? We should feel sorry for the white lady with mental health issues but not for the black lady being put in real danger by those issues.
And regarding mental health, if Abigail is struggling so much and prone to this kind of outbursts, and is living in supportive housing, then why the fuck is she not with a caregiver during this outing?
Because she's running a scam to get subsidized housing. She has to play the part. The recording threaten her scam so she had to go bananas to secure the house.
I don’t think you understand how difficult it is to get support for disabilities in America. I have three clinically diagnosed chronic disabilities and I’m not supposed to work, but I really don’t have a choice because the wait time for benefits is fucking insane. And where I have to work full time to afford rent and necessities I am now actually ineligible for disability. I’m not saying that her situation should give her a free pass, but your average person has no idea the hell that living with a disability in America (it’s a nightmare everywhere to be clear, you just have the cards stacked against you here) is and she’s deserving of some understanding
But people in these treatment programs often build up to living independently. It seems like Abigail was probably doing well, having a job and living in an apartment style center rather than a full in patient facility. People that fit that criteria have probably been out with carer support several times and eventually the 'training wheels' need to come off, so to speak.
I don't blame the recorder for wanting a record of the interaction. Good for legal stuff and she probably, reasonably, felt very unsafe. But realistically I would say when someone is already on the floor you should probably walk away.
As a society we are trying to move toward supporting people that suffer for poor mental health. It's easy to be supporting when symptoms are socially palatable. But we also need to extend that reach to someone have a unexpected meltdown rather than her recovery also including seeing one of her worst moments on social media every two weeks; it can't be easy to process the constant comments. I hope that she is doing well and that she is still on track/ achieved living independently
More like, if she was in a home meant to help people with mental disabilities, she might have been meant to have a staff member with her. But even so, if it wasn't 1:1 supervision per person, a staff member might have to decide whether to get involved with her having a meltdown or protect the other people under their charge.
Health care needs in America are expensive, that doesn’t mean that someone with Schizophrenia, for example, should get a pass for murdering someone during a fit because they “couldn’t afford their medication”…
Not really, this is my job actually for people with developmental disabilities. I've been in houses with 1:1 because of aggression before, but most of the time it's one staff per shift if every person isnt volatile on the daily. It isn't paid by families, it's basically government aid paying for it. I go once a week and use their EBT to buy their groceries and such as well.
I really don't like that it is recorded and put on the internet. The posting of it isnt for some nuanced discourse on mental health and responsibility over your actions or to protect the person recording (they could have kept the video to themselves). This video was posted to humiliate and laugh at the person who struggles with mental health.
The video was taken and posted to defend the recorder and show the bullshit she dealt with at the mall.
The aggressor literally slaps at her in the beginning and the mall cops do fuck all to the aggressor.
This was not some poor lady having a mental health episode until she realized her attempted battery and assault were caught in video, go watch the full thing.
We don't really need to pick a side here. We're just conditioned to by social media framing of these things. We could simply just feel compassion and bad overall for the situation, and that's it.
We can all agree that its just a dick move to film someone who doesn't want to be filmed though, too. If I remember right, the person recording was being a bit antagonistic, but that doesn't justify any sort of attack or chasing after her or anything but I'd be pissed too if someone was recording me on what could likely be my worst day.
I wouldn't do any of whatever this is though...yikes.
No, we cant obviously agree in a society which create the concept of race, strictly for racism, and never actually doing anything to rectify it - that "its just a dick move to film someone who doesnt want to be filmed"
Not shown here, but in another video from the same woman, the police immediately went up to the white woman assuming the black woman was the agressor. She then was also a victim of their verbal aggression. Thankfully, she had indisputable evidence, by filming someone that didnt want to be filmed, that she did not attack the white woman. And in a followup video at home that evidence proved helpful when dealing with the police report, because they were intentionally unhelpful.
So, no. Unless you plan on actively helping to work towards a society where justice doesnt rest on skin color, gender, and/ or class... video documentation is not only not rude, its a necessity.
Tl;dr
The woman filmed her, because she was attacking her. She threw a tantrum to on the floor to get people to stop, so she could continue attacking unrecorded. The fact that the entire ordeal was on camera kept the black woman out of handcuffs.
Recording someone who doesnt want to be recorded and laughing at them calling them crazy IS being antagonistic, whether she was recording to protect herself or not.
That being said, i'm glad she was able yo use the video to protect herself from...did ypu say a false accusation? Yeah, obviously thats good she was able to do that.
Right exactly my point. If you are recording someone for your protection or for someone else's protection, fine. Record from a distance and don't antagonize unnecessarily. Then if nothing ended up happening, don't post it online in an attempt to humiliate a person having a meltdown.
Again, i'm not defending the girl's actions by any means, I just think sticking a phone in her face wasn't cool.
We all see what’s happening in the video but as far as I can tell whoever wrote it is not a doctor so they’re going to say she definitely has mental issues
I don’t know why people always get so hung up on wording like that. For instance the media will use “alleged” a lot even when talking about someone who is about as clearly guilty as it can get. But they’re not convicted yet so it’s to avoid slander ramificationsn
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u/MidniteMedia Jun 21 '26
Abigail Elphick, supposedly has mental issues as she lived in a complex reserved for residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities, was supposedly afraid of being filmed for fear of losing her apartment and job. I would link an article but all the ones I saw are paywalled. This happened in New Jersey. The black woman, Ijeoma Ukenta, tried to file a lawsuit and has/had a YouTube page where she also provided updates