A newly released video shows a group of mostly Black partygoers getting sprayed by a water hose by a neighbor while attending a surprise birthday party in Queens, but the neighbor claims his actions were justified and not motivated by racism.
The video clip was released by the attorneys for the partygoers, who have filed a lawsuit against the White neighbor alleging they were “humiliated, put into fear, embarrassed and degraded” by the Sept. 17, 2022 incident. (The clip is shown below.)
In the clip, the guests can be seen reacting to getting doused by neighbor Marcus Rosebrock in the backyard of the Forest Hills, Queens, home of Yves Duroseau, the head of emergency medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, and his wife Claude.
“I’m videotaping the neighbor throwing water at us,” the woman videotaping the incident can be heard saying.
According to the lawsuit, Duroseau, who was the first doctor in the United States to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, and his wife, who are two of the 19 plaintiffs in the case, were hosting a surprise birthday party for Duroseau’s younger sister Rose Duroseau at the time.
“This one minute and 12 second clip is a snapshot of a series of incidents that happened over a span of an hour,” Rosebrock’s attorney Brandon Gillard tells PEOPLE. “The clip doesn’t show what happened before or after.”
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According to the lawsuit, the guests at the party included Rose’s friends from Fordham Law School, her alma mater, as well as Rigo Morales, cofounder of the Recording Academy’s Black Music Collective.
The lawsuit alleges that at about 9:50 p.m., when the party was winding down, a White female neighbor “entered the Duroseau home uninvited with a large German Shepard and demanded that the music playing in the backyard be turned down.”
Duroseau allegedly told the woman that the party “would be winding down soon” and asked her to “leave his house and his property.”
Shortly after that, Rosebrock allegedly “took his water hose and began water hosing" partygoers in Duroseau’s backyard “to get them to disperse, creating a scene reminiscent of 1960’s Birmingham, Alabama, when White law enforcement officers used fire hoses to douse, assault and batter African Americans participating in civil rights demonstrations in an attempt to get them to comply and disperse.”
According to the lawsuit, Duroseau and some other guests climbed Duroseau's sons treehouse in the backyard near the fence to ask Rosebrock to stop spraying them but “Rosebrock doubled down and continued water hosing.”
“We experienced a very specific, very heinous type of attack that harkens back to a dark period of this country’s history,” partygoer Katya Dossous said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE. “A monstrous, racist, hateful tactic historically used against people of color. An attack I believe was premeditated, deliberate and thought out with the intent to make us feel less than, like animals.
“Water hoses have long been used against people of color. Mr. Rosebrock chose this specific method with the intent of dehumanizing us,” she added. “It was deeply disheartening and demoralizing to be subjected to a hateful crime at Doctor Duroseau’s home, during a joyful birthday celebration for my friend of 30 years.”
Mina Malik, an attorney representing the Duroseaus and the partygoers, says in an email that her clients, to this day, “remain traumatized from being menaced by a German Shepherd and viciously water hosed by Mr. Rosebrock.”
“The Duroseaus want to use this negative opportunity to shed light on the fact that no Black person, no matter where they live or their profession, is protected from racism,” she tells PEOPLE. “Dr. Duroseau wants to be a voice for others who are subjected to racist acts and empower those who don’t have the same means or platform to speak out against racism.”
The Duroseaus, says Malik, “have not been able to enjoy their home like they once did. Since that evening, they have not gotten together with friends for a celebration in their garden for fear that Marcus Rosebrock will treat them as less than human again.”
Rosebrock’s attorney Gillard says his client “refutes any characterization that he is racist or that his actions were racially motivated. To compare Plaintiff’s aggressive and violent actions at a house party with those of the peaceful protesters of the 1960s is a false equivalence and is disrespectful of the legacy of those who suffered indignities while fighting for civil rights.”
