Video: Homeless Woman Throws Hot Coffee at California Doughnut Shop Owner’s Face

Warning: Footage may be disturbing to some viewers

Surveillance footage shows the moment a homeless woman throws a cup of hot coffee at a doughnut shop owner’s face over the weekend, according to reports.

Cindy Seam-Kao, the owner of Spudnuts Donuts in Canoga Park, California, approaches a homeless woman wearing a hooded sweatshirt to ask her to leave after she caused a disturbance.

The woman was “just being loud. Wailing. Scaring the little girl. And that’s what concerned me,” Seam-Kao told CBS Los Angeles.

She said the homeless woman, who was not identified, has been in her store before but she wasn’t a problem in the past. This time around, however, the woman’s behavior was off-putting and so she asked her to leave.

“I did not expect for her to throw coffee at me,” Seam-Kao said. The surveillance footage corroborates her claim, showing the woman violently tossing the coffee at Seam-Kao as she swats at the woman, who then kicks her.

She said the homeless woman, who was not identified, has been in her store before but she wasn’t a problem in the past. This time around, however, the woman’s behavior was off-putting and so she asked her to leave. Credit: Cindy Seam via Storyful

Other employees then force the woman out of the shop. She filed a police report with the city.

“She’s definitely homeless and mentally ill. So we’ve had her in here several times. But she’s just yelled or she'll curse at somebody ... she’s never been this violent,” she told ABC7.

Seam-Kao, however, doesn’t think that anything will be done due to Los Angeles’s serious homeless problem.

“It feels like we have less rights than they do,” Seam-Kao said of the homeless.

She’s been sympathetic to some homeless customers but now, she will be more cautious. “This is kind of a hard situation to deal with when you feel compassion for people and it kind of backfires,” she added.

“I think like people are talking about it and tired of it but we can’t do anything about it,” said Seam of the homeless problem, CBS reported.

According to local reports, the homeless woman was arrested.

LA Homeless Problem

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said that there are more than 52,765 homeless individuals, sheltered and unsheltered, in the city as of May 2018.

In six years, the homeless population has surged, according to data from the LAHSA.

Between 2010 and 2017, “The number of homeless people across Los Angeles County went from 38,700 to over 55,000, an increase of 42 percent. Many factors contributed to such large increases in homelessness, including Los Angeles County’s housing supply issues,” the data says.

A homeless woman eats an apple in Skid Row, Los Angeles, on March 21, 2013. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Meanwhile, a 2017 report by the California Housing Partnership (CHP) found that “median rent in the county has increased by 32 percent over the past two decades while renter median decreased by 3 percent (adjusting for inflation) over the same time period,” the group said.

“This is particularly significant given that over half of Los Angeles County residents are renters. Furthermore, CHP estimates that LA County needs an additional 568,000 affordable housing units in order to meet the demand of its lowest-income renters.”

The LA Times says that three out of four homeless people live in campers, tents, cars, lean-tos, and other makeshift shelters.

“We are moving more homeless families and adults into housing,” Phil Ansell, director of the Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative, told the paper. “What we have less control over is the inflow: people who simply are unable to pay the rent.”