The Bay Area’s latest viral video star is a woman who opened a can of whoop-ass on some young Trumper half her age after he tried to stun-gun her at a Berkeley Tesla protest Saturday.

You are likely aware that there have been protests at Tesla showrooms nationwide amidst the company’s CEO Elon Musk’s self-enriching dismantlement of the US government. And naturally, these protests are also happening in Berkeley. But this past Saturday’s Berkeley Tesla protest produced a viral video star.

When a known pro-Trump agitator disrupted the demonstration and attempted to stun-gun some of the protesters, an older woman intervened and showed him some “grandmotherly love.” And by “grandmotherly love,” we mean the kind where she grabs you by the ear and drags you across the room before whacking your knuckles with a ruler.

OK, let’s back up here. The full video of the fracas can be seen below. As the protesters are demonstrating, a man wearing all-black comes riding in on a bike, and the protestors recognize him from previous attempts to agitate them. Words are shared, and the young man in black produces a stun gun and attempts to taze a gray-haired woman. That gray-haired woman proceeds to give him the business, before throwing the youngster up against a car until police arrive to arrest him.

Berkeleyside spoke with the woman afterwards. She’s been identified as Susan Kegeles of Berkeley. She also happens to be a longtime UCSF Professor of Medicine, with a specialty in HIV prevention.

“When he tried to hurt me I wasn’t going to wait around,” Kegeles told Berkeleyside.


We have additional information from the Berkeley Scanner that the suspect is 33-year-old Ricardo Ruiz, and that he was booked on a misdemeanor charge of exhibiting a weapon other than a firearm, then released. And he is known to the Tesla protesters, because as seen in the video below, he shows up to antagonize them on a fairly regular basis.

Ruiz is clearly a fan of depicting himself as a tough-guy persona, and mocks the protesters as “all hella old-ass people.” But he will likely have trouble living down the fact that a “hella old-ass” woman twice his age beat him like a rented mule, and without even breaking a sweat.

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Image: A. Mark Liiv via Vimeo