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Man At Center Of Social Media Firestorm Denies Dumping Water On Homeless Woman

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- The man seen on video dumping a bucket of water from a rooftop onto a homeless woman's tent below is reeling from a social media backlash and now insists he only poured water on the woman's belongings, but never got her wet.

The video was posted on social media and initially, Don Soker denied to KPIX 5 that he was the man on the video. He later admitted on social media he dumped the water.

San Francisco police have launched an investigation into the incident and homeless advocates have demanded legal action.

Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness called the action "inexcusable" under any circumstance.

"It is inexcusable to pour water on someone in these circumstances," she said adding her organization is investigating and has not been able to track the woman down to talk to her directly.

Friedenbach said even the act of pouring water on the woman's belongings was "inhumane."

"Clearly he is still not seeing this person as a human being. It's such a struggle to live outdoors especially for women."

"The problem is when you don't have a home, your survival gear is all you have and when it gets wet, it doesn't work to protect you anymore. Your blanket is wet and your clothes are wet and you don't have a dryer to throw your clothes in."

Friedenbach said people need to have patience and compassion dealing with people living on the streets.

"We are all rubbing up against each other. But we have got to act appropriately and not take it out on someone who is the victim of bad housing policy."

In a phone interview with KPIX 5, Soker again fully admitted to pouring water from the roof of the building down on top of a homeless woman's tent below, but he believes the action is being mischaracterized, as he claims he was not intending to dump water on the homeless woman just on a pile of belongings he claimed were a fire hazard.

"I was pouring the water down the wall onto a pile of rags and paper she had piled up against the wall," he said. "It was flammable material. If you look at the last frame of the video, you see the water just running down the wall onto this pile of rags. She didn't get wet at all. It's false news."

Soker said he poured the water because a customer informed him that the homeless woman was setting up camp outside his building.

"A woman had come into my gallery and she said, 'did you know there's a woman camping outside and she's not very friendly and she's probably going to harass your customers?'" he said.

"After this woman left I went downstairs and asked her if she could at least move the garbage away from the building. It was rags and some wood scraps piled up against the wall of the building, next to the door.

"She said, 'F*** you! Go f*** yourself, I'm not doing anything.'"

"So I decided it was a fire hazard," he said. "I went upstairs and got a bucket of water and poured it onto the refuse. I looked closely before I poured it and she was sitting away on the curb. I didn't pour it on her at all. You can clearly see on the video that I'm pouring the water down the wall."

Soker then admitted that the video shows the second bucket getting poured down. The first pouring was not caught on camera.

On June 26, a witness told KPIX that the first pouring covered the woman in water.

"I heard someone yelling up at the roof, like a woman screaming, and it turned out that she was wet from head to toe," said Richard Carabello.

"Yeah, well,, the first pouring ... she was making camp," he said. "Laying out cardboard and making camp. She was laying out cardboard and making a foundation for her tent to be set up."

He insists she could not have gotten wet.

"That is a total lie.," he said. "I refute that entirely. The first water pouring was down the wall far away from her and wasn't even close to her. She could not have been hit because she was so far away from the wall, she couldn't have been hit. It just dripped down the wall like a waterfall but she was away from the wall. "

Soker now says he lied to KPIX during an on-camera interview during which he blamed the incident on roofers.

"I realized that it was a can of worms, and I thought making up the roofer story would get rid of this thing and make it and go away," he said.

Soker said the social media backlash has been intense.

"People are saying the worst possible things," he said. "That I'm the worst person in the world. This is what false news does to people. I didn't have any intention of harming the woman at all. Most of my close friends know I would not do something like this."

He said he has regrets, but does not intend to apologize.

"Of course I regret," he said. "I didn't think It would cause any problems. I thought it would dampen the garbage and she would move on."

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to apologize for. Dumping water on pile of refuse. I can apologize for dumping water on her belongings, rags and paper scraps. They are a fire hazard leaning against the building. I thought it was in the interest of building safety doing this."

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