The woman at the center of one of the wildest videos from the New York Knicks championship parade has finally shared her side of the story.
Days after footage of a bizarre altercation in Lower Manhattan spread across social media, the woman dubbed the "traffic light climber" posted an Instagram video insisting she isn't a bully and explained what led to the now-viral confrontation.
"Everybody saying I'm a bully. I'm not a bully. That's not what I do," she said in the clip that can be seen below. "And let me make this very clear. No one's gonna bully me."
The video she's responding to quickly became one of the most talked-about moments from Thursday's (June 18) parade celebrating the New York Knicks' first NBA championship in 53 years.
The clip begins with the woman perched atop a traffic light pole as thousands of fans packed the streets around her. Another woman standing below eventually grabbed at her legs, causing the climber to come down from the pole. What happened next only added to the chaos.
The woman who had been sitting on the traffic light threw the other woman to the ground. The second woman quickly jumped back up and pulled down her opponent's shorts, exposing her before the clip ended with the two continuing to tussle as stunned fans looked on.
Rather than appearing embarrassed, the woman seemed to embrace the moment, even twerking as the confrontation unfolded. Now, she's saying there was more to the story.
In her Instagram explanation, the woman said she had climbed the traffic light simply because she wanted to take a picture and insisted she had never met the other woman before. "I don't know the young lady," she said. "The lady wants to be screaming and cussing, like, 'Oh, you a fat, black bitch.' I said, 'Okay, but you're mad though.'"
According to her account, the situation escalated when the other woman began tugging at her legs while she was still hanging onto the pole.
"It got to a point where she was pulling my legs, so I came down," she explained. "You're not about to knock my hands off of it."
She said that as she descended, she decided to defend herself. "On the way down, I decided to just handle her, so I threw her down before you tried to move my hands," she said.
She later joked about the now-viral twerking moment. "Shorty thought she was gonna beat on me from the back, but... I had to twerk," she said with a laugh.
Despite becoming one of the parade's biggest viral moments, the woman said she has no regrets about attending the celebration. "I had a great time," she admitted. "I was having a good time. I came out here to have a little time. I love to have fun."
She again pushed back on accusations that she intentionally targeted the other woman. "I don't start with nobody," she said. "That's not my speed. That's not what I do."
