Videotape Sends Bullying Neighbor to Jail
Oct. 1 -- For three years, Mario Flores, a 40-year-old metal worker with a mild mental disability, arrived home from work only to have his neighbor greet him with slaps, taunts, name-calling, and once, even a machete.
But Flores, a soft-spoken man who said he was picked on for being easygoing, came up with a plan to fight back against Fred Brandstadter, a 41-year-old construction worker whom he said he had always been friendly to.
"He kept bothering me, Fred Brandstadter, so I asked an officer to talk to him so we could get along," Flores told Good Morning America. The abuse put him in fear of his life, he said.
Flores used a hidden video camera to tape some of the nightly assaults that happened in the hallway of his home in a residential hotel in San Mateo, Calif. Brandstadter, who had pleaded no contest to hate-crime assault against Flores, was sentenced to two years in state prison on Friday.
The tapes depicted a slew of incidents. In one, Brandstadter uses an anti-gay epithet while pushing Flores against the wall. In others he is shown hitting Flores in the head and knocking him into the wall; hitting him through an open door; and shoving him while holding a pizza box in the other hand.
The following is a transcript of some of the taped incidents:
Fred Brandstadter: (in a mocking voice) I'm so scared. I'm so scared.
Mario Flores: Why are you always picking on me?
Brandstadter: 'Cause I can.
Flores: I know you can get away with it. I know you can get away with it.
Brandstadter: I can get away with it. I can do anything I want. You know why? 'Cause you're a faggot.
Flores: You know I'm not a fag. I'm just a delicate white boy.
Brandstadter: Yes you are. You're a fag. Look at you. Look at this s--- you wear.
Flores: That hurts right there.
Brandstadter: I don't give a f---. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care Mario.
Flores: Don't.
Brandstadter: I don't care. There's nothing you can do about it.
Flores: How about just because you want to be nice to me?
