A woman who works in downtown Portland says a food cart owner aimed a stream of racist slurs at her in a dispute over her request for a special order last week and she has reported him to the Better Business Bureau.

The owner, who was involved in a similar clash in 2018, acknowledged using the slurs and said the woman initiated the confrontation. He has filed a police report against her.

The encounter occurred last Thursday when Darline Hill said she walked from her office to the Small Pharaoh cart on Southwest Stark Street and Fifth Avenue.

Hill said she ordered chicken over salad, then asked Islam El Masry to add rice and feta cheese.

El Masry took her credit card, then told her that he didn’t have time to make special orders and that she should go somewhere else, she said.

Hill asked El Masry why he took her credit card and he told her he didn’t charge it, she said. She questioned him again and said he responded by calling her a racist slur and telling her to go somewhere else.

“I was in shock," said Hill, who is African American. “Then I was like, ‘How dare you, what is wrong with you?'"

At that point, she said, El Masry called her the slur again. Others nearby heard El Masry and told him he couldn’t say those words, she said.

Hill started walking back to her office. “I couldn’t digest what he’d said to me,” she said.

El Masry said he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong. He said Hill was disrespectful when she asked for her food and he told her to find another restaurant.

Hill started insulting him and threw a bottle of Gatorade at him, El Masry said. The bottle hit an open energy drink in the cart and fell on the food, he said. “I had to throw everything away,” he said.

At that point, he said, he called Hill the racist slur several times

“It’s about behavior,” he said. “If you respond to me, I respond back. My dignity is very precious to me. So I have to respond right away.”

El Masry said he reported the confrontation to the Portland Police Bureau the same day. Police confirmed that El Masry had filed a police report, but said the report did not include anything about a Gatorade bottle being thrown.

Hill said she never raised her voice at El Masry. She said she threw a bottle of Gatorade from the cart’s counter into the stall, but it was after El Masry used the slur.

“I was always going to buy a Gatorade,” she said. “I was standing there, and then the barrage of insults came. I wasn’t trying to hit him, but in my mind, it was in frustration. After he called me that last racial slur, I threw the exact bottle that I was going to buy.”

Hill said she reported El Masry to the Better Business Bureau on Monday and plans to file a complaint with the state Bureau of Labor and Industries.

“It’s a safety issue,” she said. “When he did this before, he put hot sauce in somebody’s eye. If it happens again, he could hurt someone.”

El Masry two years ago called another black woman, Carlotta Washington, a racist slur after she offered to pay the majority of her $7 bill in quarters. He doused Washington in Gatorade and Sriracha hot sauce.

El Masry was arrested and later settled with Washington, agreeing to pay her $1,000 in exchange for her dropping the charges.

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Hill said she hopes to see El Masry’s shop closed, both for others’ safety and for El Masry’s own.

“I feel like either he’s really going to hurt somebody, or someone will hurt him,” she said.

—Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR

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