Gisele Fetterman grateful for support after enduring racial slurs while shopping

Gisele Fetterman, wife of Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, said Monday she is grateful for the support she has received after a stranger verbally attacked her at a grocery store near her home.

“Everyone from the governor (Tom Wolf) to our attorney general (Josh Shapiro) to our senator (Bob Casey), they are representative of my Pennsylvania, they are representative of my country that I love so much, they are America,” Fetterman said.

Though subject to online attacks over the years, Fetterman, a 38-year-old native of Brazil, said she never had someone attack her to her face until Sunday’s incident, when a woman unleashed a vicious verbal assault.

Fetterman said the woman has been identified, and her security detail is handling the investigation.

“She said I don’t belong here. She said, ‘There’s that n-word that Fetterman married.’ She called me a thief and a few other things, and she repeated it over and over again both inside and outside of the store.”

*TRIGGER WARNING* I love love love this country but we are so deeply divided. I ran to the local grocery store and was met by and verbally assaulted by this woman who repeatedly told me I do not belong here. The confrontation continued into the parking lot where I was able to pic.twitter.com/kzSoxCVJ2x

— Gisele Barreto Fetterman (@giselefetterman) October 11, 2020

Fetterman was alone. She didn’t notify her security detail when she went to an Aldi store along Route 30 (at Ardmore and Yost boulevards) in Forest Hills. She said the woman continued to follow her to her car after she left the store. She recorded a video of the woman calling her a racial slur.

“The ethnic intimidation and racist speech spewed at the Second Lady of Pennsylvania is shameful and unacceptable,” Gov. Tom Wolf said. “Gisele Fetterman spends much of her time devoted to making our state and world a better place and she — and every Pennsylvanian — deserves our respect.”

Fetterman said she has endured plenty of insults hurled at her in the past.

“If you look at the comments on any story that involves me, I pretty regularly get the ‘go back to your country,’ and calling me an illegal alien and all these very hurtful things,” she said. “I’ve gotten used to it over the years. But this was the first time to my face, and it was so aggressive and scary and a whole new experience I don’t want to have to get used to.”

She said she will think twice before going shopping again without her security detail.

“I hate to think that I should feel unsafe or anyone should feel unsafe going to a grocery store three minutes from their home,” Fetterman said. “But I will call my detail (in the future). I didn’t want to bother them. It was a three-minute trip, and I didn’t think twice about it. But I will think twice about it after this experience.”

Forest Hills Mayor Frank Porco said he was shocked when he heard about the incident.

“I’m really sorry to hear that she experienced that,” Porco said Monday. “I feel horrible that anybody would undergo that, much less a woman like Gisele Fetterman who does everything in her power, it seems to me, to bring positivity and goodness to both the region and her town of Braddock.”

Fetterman said her three children saw how upset she was when she returned home.

“I had to share with them what happened. They were sad that I was so upset. This is not new. They’ve seen people treat me differently than they treat their father,” she said. “I’m raising three kids to be really kind in this world, and you have to have these conversations with them for them to know right and wrong. One of my kids said, ‘I wonder if (the woman) has someone who loves her?’ I wondered that, too.”

She wants the woman to be met with compassion, the way she defused at least one similar situation in the past. She recalled an incident at the free store she runs in Braddock, where she receives surplus and donated goods that are given to people in need.

“Last year, a gentleman had come for food and I gave him food, and I then answered my phone — it was my Mom calling. I was speaking to her in Portuguese. He then made an anti-immigrant comment,” Fetterman said. “I asked him why he said that, and he was willing to engage with me. We had a really nice conversation. He actually apologized, and we hugged it out.”