Homeless man featured in heartwarming TikTok video that sparked $400K in donations allegedly has violent past, woman claims
A homeless man at the center of a heartwarming TikTok video that led to $400,000 in donations allegedly has a violent past, according to a report.
A viral video posted on social media showed a fashion intern who was walking by a man begging for tea before the two ended up spending the day together.
The vlogger, Sanai Graden, ended up putting him up in a hotel room and helped pay for his medicine.
The heartwarming story took a sudden turn this week. TikTok
Graden later launched a fundraiser for the man, who is also battling cancer, and an astounding $403,000 has already been raised.
“He asked for tea and the rest is history,” Sanai Graden, who recently moved to the nation’s capital for college, told Fox 5 DC in an interview this week.
But the same station later found a woman who says she was once brutally beaten by the same man in the video – and who apparently has a criminal rap sheet.
The homeless man was identified as Alonzo Douglas Hebron by the victim, according to Fox 5 DC.
The woman ID’d the man as the same person who assaulted her. FOX5
“I’m speechless,” she said of the viral video that featured him. “I do not understand how a human being can act like this. He’s a sociopath. He does not have a sense of remorse.”
DC police said in a June 2020 news release that Hebron assaulted a woman and stole from her before fleeing the scene. He was arrested days later. Footage of the attack showed a man place a scarf over her head as she slept outside of a Methodist church before she was pummeled, Fox 5 DC reported.
The attack happened in 2020. FOX5
Hebron was sentenced to five years in prison back in 2012 after he stabbed a man in the back with a screwdriver during a fight, the US Attorney’s Office said at the time. The victim bled profusely from the stabbing and was rushed to the hospital.
The woman who spoke to Fox 5 DC said she doesn’t blame the Graden for helping him.
The charitable effort has still been lauded.
“I was heartbroken,” the woman, who did not want to be identified, said from watching the TikTok video of the good deed.
“First of all – kudos to the woman who did this. She meant well, and I do applaud her for that. I know it was a lot of work for her to do so, but portraying him as something he just simply isn’t…”