61-year-old Filipina randomly shoved into car after grocery shopping in Vancouver

According to Armor Valor Corrales, Gavino’s great-nephew, his great-aunt was just loading her groceries into a car when the woman walked towards her direction and shoved her onto the side of the vehicle. (File photo: Pixabay)

A 61-year-old Filipina, MaryLou Gavino, went shopping at the 88 Supermarket on Victoria Drive in Vancouver last August 8, Saturday, along with a family friend. But what she thought would be just another ordinary grocery day for her turned out to be an unpleasant experience.

Gavino, who is a caregiver, has been shopping at the 88 Supermarket for more than a decade and nothing awful has ever happened to her around the area until she was suddenly attacked by a Caucasian woman outside the supermarket in the morning of that day.

According to Armor Valor Corrales, Gavino’s great-nephew, his great-aunt was just loading her groceries into a car when the woman walked towards her direction and shoved her onto the side of the vehicle. The woman then continued walking while shouting some inaudible words.

Gavino’s family could not think of any other reason behind this physical attack aside from being another case of racism against Asian people.

“This incident occurred in [the] middle of a global pandemic which has caused a few to turn with anger towards who they deem have started this pandemic, Asians,” Corrales told Philippine Canadian Inquirer.

“We do believe that this random act was an act of racism, Vancouver has seen a rise in anti-Asian violence and we do believe that this was no exception,” he added.

Learning about the incident from his mom, the 20-year-old Political Science student rushed to the grocery store to see if anyone witnessed the incident. Fortunately, employees at the supermarket, as well as the manager from the other store, cooperated with Corrales as he informed them about the incident and immediately looked into their CCTV footage. When he was given the video clip, Corrales reported it to the Vancouver police.

The authorities decided to conduct further investigation on the case, but Corrales said his great-aunt did not want to press any civil charges against her assailant, instead she wanted her experience to serve as an awareness to Canadians about the situation of racism in their country.

Despite this, the responding police officer told them that “it would be within his mandate to arrest” the woman for her criminal charges if he would see her in public.

Although this was not the first time their family has become the target of discrimination, Corrales never did imagine that they would experience racism to the extent of violence, particularly by their older loved ones.

“As members of the Filipino Community in Canada, we collectively serve a great deal to the communities that we live in, especially during the midst of a global health pandemic,” he said.

“Many members of my family and the Filipino community in general, serve on the front-lines of health care and care-giving, so to think that we may have been targeted for our ethnicity, disregards all that we have done for this community,” he continued.

Corrales said the case remains open and that they have not received any updates on it yet, as of writing.