The two men caught on camera in a late-night brawl at Lowmans Hill on March 2 were lovers employed at Sandals, who have since resigned from the company, New York Post has reported.
On March 3, iWitness News published a video of the public brawl in which one of the men shoved the other into a roadside gutter and stomped on him as a vehicle idled on the carriageway.
On March 5, YouTube informed iWitness News that it had received “a privacy complaint from an individual regarding your content”.
(Please click here to subscribe to the iWitness News WhatsApp channel)
However, iWitness News responded to YouTube indicating that the video is of an incident that occurred in a public place in a democratic country, namely St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
“There is no reasonable expectation of privacy when one person is violent to another in a public place,” iWitness News reasoned. “This video was published for news purposes.”
YouTube later responded, saying that it had reviewed the complaint and had determined that the content “is excepted from removal based on our privacy guidelines…
“The content does not violate our policies and will remain on the site,” YouTube informed iWitness News.
Then, on Saturday (today), New York Post, which obtained permission to use the iWitness News video, published an article identifying the men in the brawl as Sandals art curator Rafael de Vasconcelos attacking his partner, the hotel chain’s chief development officer Eugene Staal.
The publication cited a senior executive as saying that the couple were staying in St. Vincent ahead of Sandals’ March 27 opening and had left a function around 11 p.m.
The publication said that it was de Vasconcelos who appeared in the video shoving Staal into the concrete gutter along the highway.
Police responded to the incident but it is still unclear what caused the altercation.
New York Post cited the unnamed senior executive as saying Staal received medical treatment after the attack.
The publication further said Staal is a veteran hospitality executive who previously held positions at Hyatt and Penta Hotels and joined Sandals in 2022, according to his LinkedIn.
De Vasconcelos, who previously worked as a fraud analyst for Apple in Lisbon, Portugal, joined the company in January.
New York Post quoted a Sandals senior executive as saying de Vasconcelos was asked to resign days after the footage began circulating around the company.
The publication said it had seen an email in which Staal resigned “for personal reasons” on March 11.
This was not news to begin with more like your standard comessy nosey neighbour. When I first read about two non-national brawl I taught iwitness news just looked desperate for news. if iwitness news is the one who record and post this You made two people lose their jobs just because of desperation to call anything news.