“Is this the America we want?” asked Andrea Natale, MD, executive medical director of the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute at St. David’s Medical Center in Austin.
It was part of a tweet that made news: Natale asserted that his daughter and her unnamed boyfriend, who are both white, had been attacked by Black Lives Matter activists, with the boyfriend beaten. Natale further said city police “cannot do anything” because the suspects were Black.
As the Baltimore Sun reported, that wasn’t the case.
Bodycam footage of the police officers who responded to the emergency call and audio from the dispatcher made it clear that the car had been damaged after she and the man in the car confronted a group of “squeegee boys” panhandling by offering to wash car windows. Rocks were allegedly thrown and threats were traded, but no one was actually beaten.
Although Andrea Natale had pinned the event on the kids being Black, the audio and video don’t reference race.
Twitter was quick to call the electrophysiologist out for racism, and a number of tweets also targeted his institution and the Journal of Interventional Cardiac Electrophysiology for which he serves as editor-in-chief.
Natale’s Twitter account has since been deleted. The journal has since switched to private mode on Twitter.
However, Natale issued a statement of apology through St. David’s Medical Center.
“I sincerely apologize for a tweet I posted this weekend. I was worried about my daughter, and I jumped to a conclusion based on the information I had at the time. I’ve dedicated my entire professional career to healing people from all backgrounds, and I regret that my words were misinterpreted and created hurt and pain. It was not my intention,” he said.
He did not respond to a request for comment from MedPage Today.
Last Updated September 16, 2020
Source: MedicalNewsToday.com
