Toronto

A man who hurled a vulgar comment and swore at a CityNews reporter outside of a Toronto FC game is being fired by Hydro One.

The company confirmed Shawn Simoes is in the process of being terminated from his position as an assistant network management engineer.

“Hydro One is taking steps to terminate one of its employees for violating its code of conduct,” said the company’s director of communications, Daffyd Roderick. “Respect for all people is ingrained in our values. We’re committed to a work environment where harassment of any kind is met with zero tolerance and a swift response.”

Roderick would not specify how long Simoes was employed at Hydro One, as that is “a personnel issue.”

Two days after reporter Shauna Hunt turned her mic on obnoxious Toronto FC supporters, MLSE revealed Tuesday morning they’re hunting down the fans involved.

Hunt — tired of being harassed on the job — barked back when an unidentified TFC fan yelled “f--- her right in the p----” into her mic outside BMO Field on Sunday. She said she overheard another group of men conspiring to do the same thing.

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In the aftermath, Hunt asked another man, now identified as Simoes, “What if your mom saw you?” “My mom would die laughing,” he replied with a bellowing laugh.

Simoes also said Hunt was lucky she did not have a “vibrator” in her ear.

According to the 2014 Sunshine List, Simoes made the 2014 Sunshine List with a salary of roughly $106,510 and $709.10 in taxable benefits.

Ontario ombudsman Andre Marin weighed in on Twitter.

“Public servants should b held to a higher std at all times. Engaging in a very public act of sex harass’t deserves quick sanction,” he tweeted.

Ontario Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli said that regardless of where this individual works, this behaviour is “absolutely unacceptable.

“Freedom of the press means freedom to be able to communicate in a reasonable manner,” Chiarelli said. “And if that is brought to my attention, and we can identify who that individual is, certainly we’d take that back to the office and take some kind of action.”

The Ontario government is currently the sole owner of Hydro One, and it comes under the oversight of the energy minister.

The #FHRITP fad began in January 2014 as a series of fake news clips where a man posing as a Fox News “reporter” appears to be joking with his anchor about what he would do to a missing woman if he found her, and responds, “I would f--- her in the p----.”

Subsequently, the clips have inspired copycat pranks on real news reporters during live newscasts.

Simoes is listed as a midfielder on the Ontario Hydro Soccer League and is a former player on the Golden Hawks soccer team at Wilfrid Laurier University. According to an online article from WLU, he tried out for TFC in 2006.

“Wilfrid Laurier University strongly condemns the extremely offensive and discriminatory comments made to a female television reporter at a recent Toronto FC soccer game,” according to a message on the team’s Facebook page Tuesday.

Mike Schleiffer, president of the Ontario Hydro Soccer League, said he knows Simoes, but wasn’t sure if he had registered to play for the 2015 season. He wasn’t aware of the viral video, but said the league does not “condone behaviour like that.”

“If it turns out that Shawn was fired from his job, it probably serves him right for behaviour like that,” Schleiffer said.

When contacted Tuesday, Hunt said, “Going into this, our intention was not to vilify those two guys, they just happened to be the example of what hundreds of guys have been shouting at City(News) and all over the city for the past two years now,” she said. “We just wanted to shed light on the bigger issue — that it’s not OK to yell the P-word at me or any reporter. It’s unacceptable and that was the stance we were taking.”

The Toronto Sun has tried unsuccessfully to contact the men involved — including a man who wore a TFC jersey and sunglasses who told Hunt he and his friends had been waiting to make the vulgar statement on live TV.

Cognex Corp., which employs the man in the TFC jersey, released a statement Tuesday afternoon but would not confirm his identity.

“While the individual was attending the event on his own time and was not at a Cognex activity, the views expressed are totally inconsistent with Cognex’s values, and we find such comments reprehensible,” company spokesman Sarah Laskowski said, adding they “will be addressing it.”

— With files from Kurtis Larson and Antonella Artuso

jenny.yuen@sunmedia.ca