Despite losing her right eye after getting punched in the head, Bianca Palomera won’t undo standing up to a man who bullied a special-needs boy.
“Deep down, there will always be a little regret, but I wouldn’t take it back,” added the 19-year-old.
Last Saturday afternoon, Palomera was working as an assistant manager at Habit Burger in Antioch, California, when she noticed a man bullying a special-needs teen there.
“I hear the threats going, him having a problem, saying ‘who are you looking at, stop looking that way,'” Palomera said.
Her response was to stand up for him and confront his tormentor.
“‘Hey, you know, what you’re doing is wrong. It’s not right at all. He’s special needs. He doesn’t know what he’s doing,'” Palomera remembered telling him.
When she confronted him, he didn’t back down; instead, he escalated the situation.
A surveillance video shows the much larger man getting right up close and personal with Palomera. She was allegedly yelled at by him with slurs. She was seen jawing back at him.
After that, he landed a brutal punch on her left cheek.
“I didn’t expect him to punch me at all,” Palomera explained.
After briefly slumping on the chair, she stood up and chased the attacker, but he swung harder and apparently struck her in the head.
In her interview with KTVU, Palomera said she believes that second punch destroyed her eye, but the station noted she did not realize how bad her injuries were at the time.
“I just remember grabbing my eye,” she told KTVU. “I thought I was crying at first, but then after I saw that I had blood dripping down my shirt, you know, down my cheek.”
Emergency surgery was performed on her eye but it could not be saved, the station reported.
“Sometimes I think it’s all like a nightmare and try to open my eye, but regardless, I can’t see anything,” she told KTVU.
Police are investigating and trying to identify her attacker, the station reported, adding that he was seen leaving the restaurant in a BMW X3.
“We’re very proud of her,” said Palomera’s sister Erika. “She did the right thing. Her heart was there when she did it. Just that we feel like she’s getting the short end of the stick.”
Palomera told the station, “At the end of the day, if you won’t do it, nobody else will. I felt like I had to step in.”