Cardi B, her sister Hennessy Carolina, and model Michelle Diaz are being sued by beachgoers in New York following a September 6 confrontation that went viral.
Several residents of Suffolk County are suing Carolina for assault, battery, defamation, and civil rights violations over an incident on Smith Point Beach that she recorded and shared across social media.
“These peaceful Suffolk County residents were quietly enjoying a Sunday at the Smith Point beach with their families, when rap celebrity Hennessy Carolina suddenly approached them, raging, spitting, insulting, assaulting, defaming and threatening them, all the while videotaping them because one of them wore a MAGA hat,” said defense attorney John Ray, MSN reports.
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“It happened so fast. We’re just sitting there relaxing like we always do and all at once we’re being attacked,” said Peter Caliendo, one of the men in the video.
Caliendo claims he and his wife and pal Manuel Alarcon were visiting the beach on Sunday of Labor Day weekend. The couple had a Trump flag on their car while Alarcon was wearing a MAGA hat. He claims when Carolina’s girlfriend Michelle Diaz pulled up, she blocked some of the cars.
“Very nicely said, you must not be from here because you don’t know the etiquette of the beach,” Caliendo told her. That’s when Carolina allegedly emerged from the water and stormed toward the group with her cell phone recording them.
“Then I get this person, getting in my face, calling me every name in the book and you don’t even know me,” Alarcon said.
Cell phone video released by the residents’ attorney shows Hennessy popping off as the individuals at the center of her rage try to walk away.
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“Then Hennessy, Cardi B and celebrity model Michelle Diaz deviously edited the videotape and published the edited version all over social media, across the world for all to see, and maliciously falsely labeled these residents and their families as ‘N…s’ and as racists,” Ray said. “Real threats of harm were made. They live in fear now. Their reputations have been ruined. We seek substantial damages.”
Cardi posted the clip for her 14.4 million Twitter followers, noting that her sister and Diaz were harassed by one of the men in the video.
Hennessy claims two men told her and her girlfriend to “go to your f**king country.” She believes they were targeted because they “saw us parking here and we were speaking Spanish and we’re mixed.”
The residents said they had no idea the situation had gone viral until family and friends called them after seeing the video on social media.
“I had no idea of who they are, how they are, no clue. To me, they were just two girls with a dog, that was it and they parked in front of me. It’s a shame that it had to go to a level like this,” Alarcon said. “I don’t deserve this. This is not something people should go through.”
They are suing Cardi B, Carolina and Diaz for assault and defamation of character.
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