A hospital worker known as ‘CitiBike Karen’ has broken her silence after being condemned online for a fierce confrontation with a group of black teenagers.
Sarah Comrie, 36, was seen in viral footage in May in a hostile back and forth on a CitiBike near Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, which she says has now erupted after being ambushed by high school students.
Talk with New York Times Columnist Pamela Paul in a supportive post titled ‘Don’t Call Her Karen’, Comrie said she only unlocked the bike for a moment before it was swarmed by the teenagers, who she says , harassed and cursed her.
One of the teenagers disputed this after the footage sparked furious debate online, claiming Comrie stole the bike from him after he tied it up for just five minutes to avoid paying higher toll charges.
Paul came to the defense of hospital workers in her column as she criticized the backlash directed at Comrie, who was furloughed from Bellevue Hospital and faced death threats and doxxing in line due to her “Karen” tag.
Sarah Comrie, pictured here struggling with the bike in the viral footage, claimed she had already paid for the CitiBike before she was ambushed by the teenagers
The hospital worker was defended in a recent New York Times column titled ‘Don’t Call Her Karen’
Comrie said the confrontation came after she had just finished a 12.5-hour shift and decided to use an e-bike on doctors’ orders because she was pregnant and had an infection. uterine.
CitiBikes is a popular bike-sharing service available in many major US cities, where users detach bikes and e-bikes using an app.
The hospital worker claims she approached a boy leaning on one of the bikes and asked if he had been caught, and was told yes. This led her to pick up the bike next to him and scan its QR code to unlock it.
CitiBike receipts show she rented the bike at 7:24 p.m., but seconds later she says she heard a voice shouting, “Hey, that’s my bike.”
The next thing she knew, Comrie says she was surrounded by a group of teenagers, who kept saying it was their bike despite her having paid for it and unlocked it moments before.
While trying to explain that she had just rented the bike, she says that one of the other high school kids started getting more hostile towards her. As tensions mounted, she says several of the teenagers then grabbed the bike and pushed it aggressively back into the docking station, automatically relocking it.
One of the young men physically stopped her from rescanning the QR code, she claims, before using his own phone to pay for the bike instead.
Comrie said the escalation of the situation caused her to cry out for help, which is when she said one of the teenagers started recording images on her phone that then went viral.
Comrie’s ride receipt showed she only rented the bike for a few seconds because she hadn’t been charged for the ride.
Documents show the ride was eventually canceled and she was not charged, before booking another bike minutes after the incident.
The incident footage opened with Comrie already in a furious exchange with the group, and one of the teens told him he was recording the situation.
He is heard screaming for help saying, “Help! Help me! Help me please!’ As one of the off-screen men says, “That’s not your bike.”
The hospital worker then shouts again for help and asks the man to “please come down”.
She then removes her hospital badge in an apparent effort to hide her identity, as one of the men could be heard asking her, “You know you won’t get that bike?”
Comrie screams for help again and tries to get on the rental bike, before swiping the man’s phone.
‘Why are you taking his phone?’ asks one of the man’s friends. ‘What’s wrong? Don’t touch his phone, don’t touch his phone,” he told the hospital worker.
Comrie then tells the man that he’s “hurting my unborn baby”, to which the man replies, “You put your belly on my hand”.
The hospital worker was seen bursting into tears at the time, although high school students thought she was faking it and accused her of crocodile tears.
She then continues to climb on the bike, hysterical with tears, as her colleague suggests that they just “reset the bike”. Comrie then gets off the bike and seemingly stops crying as he pulls out his phone. “Not a tear fell, miss,” the friend says at the end of the video.
In the video, Comrie could be seen screaming for help and warning men she was pregnant
Comrie could even be seen crying in the video as she jumped on the disputed bike
Comrie’s version of events comes months after one of the teenagers, named only Michael, said newsone that the bike was his, but he tied it up for a few minutes to avoid paying the higher fee.
He did not dispute that she reserved the bike at 7:24 p.m., but says he stopped at the hospital docking station at 7:19 p.m. and locked the bike for five minutes before Comrie did. appears.
Michael added that the fact that he was standing by the bike before he intended to reserve it again makes him the “rightful owner” at the time Comrie reserved it.
Due to his family receiving benefits, he said he got a discount on Citi bike rides, but after 45 minutes the fare for the bikes went up. In order to avoid the higher charges, he said he frequently interrupts his rides and resets the clock by reconnecting the bike.
“I use the bikes to get to and from school. If I travel anywhere in the city, even if it’s from here to Brooklyn, my first option is Citi Bike,” he said.
“It’s my favorite mode of transportation. It’s like my car. I can’t say that all of this doesn’t affect me.
On the day of the incident, May 12, Michael and four other teenagers cycled from the Bronx to Harlem at 5:53 p.m. and then to Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Receipts shared on Newsone show his journey from his native Bronx to Harlem, then from Harlem to the Lowest East Side, stopping in front of the Bellevue.
Receipts also show he stopped at the hospital at 7:19 p.m., with Comrie’s receipt showing she started using the bike at 7:24 p.m. Receipts then show it being docked a minute later, when Comrie says the bike was aggressively pushed back into the station.
At 7:25 p.m. Michael then started using the bike, as shown on his receipt, and finished his trip at 7:31 p.m. when he returned it outside the hospital.
He insists they never left the bikes unattended and that four of his friends sat on their bikes while they rested, but he stood next to his.
A roughly 90-second video of the incident was posted on TikTok and Twitter shows Comrie arguing with the man outside Bellevue Hospital in New York (pictured)
After Comrie’s lawyer first challenged Michael’s version of events last month, Michael said he saw a worrying shift in attitude towards him.
“At first, I felt supported. It was like I went through this thing, people saw the video of it and they were supporting me. When those receipts were released, everything changed,” he said.
“People started calling me a ‘thief’, a ‘thug’ and a ‘black man’.
