Update (August 29, 2018): Christina Thomas, one of the customers assaulted in the attack, was booked on misdemeanor assault charges following the incident.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez has dropped those charges, Gothamist reports.
"It's sad it took so long, but I'm definitely relieved they dropped the charges," Thomas said.
The other woman charged following the beating, 32-year-old Huiyue Zheng, still faces charges of assault and weapon possession; if convicted, Zheng could spend up to a year in jail.
Community activists are calling for the other workers seen attacking the customers in the video to be charged, and have begun an online petition calling for New York's governor, Andrew Cuomo, to close the salon.
Original: Workers at a Brooklyn nail salon assaulted a family of black women after one of the women refused to pay for what she considered to be a botched eyebrow job.
The incident occurred Friday, August 3, at New Red Apple Nails on Nostrand Ave. in East Flatbush. Salon employees beat three black women with a metal rod in the salon after the mom didn't like how her daughter's eyebrows were waxed and refused to pay.
Video footage captured and posted by Facebook user Mercy Maduka shows salon workers surrounding a woman as one of the workers starts hitting the woman with a rod. Two other women are being detained by a worker, despite being whacked by the rod a few times, as well.
"That's my grandmother," one lady can be heard yelling.
"So I’m at the nail salon, and they f**ked up a lady eyebrow, and she refused to pay then a fight broke outtt," Maduka wrote in the caption of the original video. "Hitting them like animals."
When local activists caught wind of the incident, they came together to protest in front of the salon. While the footage captures the ending of the brawl, Facebook user Empress Ak says that not only were the women assaulted with rods, they also had acetone thrown in their face.
"I am standing with the elder who was thrown acetone in her face while her granddaughter was attacked," she wrote. "The young lady paid for her feet/nails but refused to pay for her eyebrows because she was unsatisfied."
According to a video posted to Instagram by Tamika D. Mallory, the eyebrow wax was only $5, a low price to begin abusing black women.
The New York Daily News reports 32-year-old Huiyue Zheng was charged with assault and weapon possession, according to police. She was later released on personal recognizance after a hearing Saturday in Brooklyn Criminal Court. The assaulted customer, Christina Thomas, was booked on misdemeanor assault and other charges; however, she was also released on personal recognizance.
Several signs were posted on the salon’s metal shutter reading “Black $$$ matter,” “They beat black women here” and “Don’t spend here," according to the Daily News.
"Instead of making a compromise or including a third party (police) to mediate they attacked them," Empress Ak said. "We need to start supporting our own & run them out of our communities!"
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