He said video showed Hodges hurled slurs at Cruz, and that she only used the pocket knife — which she bought at a dollar store moments before the altercation, prosecutors claimed — after she felt threatened.

Hodges took off his jacket in the video, “the international symbol in New York City for ‘Let’s go, we’re going to fight,’ and rolls up his sleeves and hits her,'” Schuman told the court.

“While he’s still berating her, he called her a f—-t and a t—-y and she spit on him.”

So let me first say, I took that word for word, in the order you see it, from an earlier New York Post article. I hate giving them any attention, but the screenshot of a headline we're commenting on came from a blurb from the same website, as an 'update' to the article I linked. It really shows that ya'll didn't actually read anything, and are just commenting on other comments. They were at a bodega, where she allegedly cut in line. That's what started all this. She was supposed to 'get him fired' when he was off duty? You know how hard it is to get a postal worker fired?

So they're just two people at a bodega. She allegedly cut in line- I can't see her saying she did, or didn't, or where there was any reported camera footage. This dude starts screamin and cussin. She spits in his face. He hits her three times, she knifes him with the knife she just bought next door.

The fact that people are jumping to defend a guy hitting a woman for spitting in his face, because it's "escalating" and disrespectful, but ignoring that it was a response to escalating and disrespectful behavior, is ridiculous. You don't blame the guy who got knifed for yelling slurs first? You don't blame the guy for striking her after getting spit in the face? Why is she supposed to quietly and meekly accept this behavior when he can make her feel unsafe?

A man makes me feel unsafe and then hits me, three times! Three! I should absolutely knife him. I probably should've knifed him after the first time. (I'm kind of a big wimp so I don't think I'd be able to knife a guy, but I for sure would be right to defend myself.) And you know what? I'm a dumpy, middle-aged, short white woman. If a guy hits me even once and I knife him in self defense, and then say, "he deserved it," there are a lot of people who would be agreeing with me.

I think if you were all up in someone's space screaming at them, there's a certain level of expected spit contact there just from talking, right?

Which is another reason you and I wouldn't be in this position. Gross!

But I do want to clarify I don't think she should be able to just like, walk away scot free from this. I just whole-heartedly disagree with people who want her dead. Or who think that fifteen years isn't a long enough sentence. Fifteen years is a long time. People are way too ready to discard people in this country.