A man who was mocked online after he was recorded shaving at his seat on a commuter train headed out of New York City said he was just trying to clean up after days spent in a homeless shelter.
Anthony Torres, 56, said that the people judging him on social media do not know the struggle he has been through in his life.
“My life is all screwed up. That’s the reason I was shaving on the train,” Torres said.
Photo: AP
A fellow passenger on a Thursday last week New Jersey Transit train took a video of Torres, sitting in his seat, steadily swiping away at his lathered face and tossing the shaving cream from the razor onto the floor.
The video, posted on Twitter, had 2.4 million views by Monday afternoon.
Another video showed a clean-shaven Torres with a beer in his hand.
The self-grooming earned its share of negative comments on the Internet, with insults like “slob,” “animal” and “nasty.”
Others humorously lauded his steady hand with a razor.
A few cautioned against passing judgement and suggested people did not know the whole story.
The truth, Torres said, is that the video captured him at a vulnerable moment.
He had been homeless and staying in a shelter in New York City.
He had reached out to his family for help. A brother gave him money for a train ticket, which he was using to get to another brother in southern New Jersey.
Torres grabbed the Northeast Corridor train from Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station at about 7pm on Thursday, headed toward Trenton, New Jersey.
He said he left the shelter before having a chance to shower and clean up, and wanted to look “presentable.”
“I don’t want to say that I’m homeless, let everybody know,” he said. “That’s why I was shaving.”
Anthony Torres has had a hard life, said his brother, Thomas Torres, 57, whose house in Atco, New Jersey, was where the younger Torres ended up after the train ride and a subsequent bus trip.
They grew up poor with four other brothers, raised on a farm in Hammonton, New Jersey, about 56km outside Philadelphia.
Anthony Torres said he worked a number of different jobs, including casino security guard and then construction.
He moved to wherever the work was, like Florida, where his adult son lives.
He said he has spent time living in motels or sleeping in bus depots.
Medical conditions have also been a problem, with Anthony Torres saying he has had two strokes in the past two years.
However, Thomas Torres said that, even growing up, his brother would make short-sighted decisions with money, or not think of the impact of his actions, like shaving in public in a train compartment.
“When he did what he did, that to him was normal,” Thomas Torres said. “He’s not that kind of person that does it because of spite or because he wants the attention.”
His voice got tear-filled as he recounted Anthony Torres initially showed up at his home after the train ride asking for a sleeping bag, saying he was prepared to go spend the night under a bridge.
“For so many years, he’s lived this way and I feel sorry for him. It’s hard to see the life that he’s lived,” Thomas Torres said.
Anthony Torres said he did not realize he was being filmed on the train.
When he found out the video was circulating on the Internet, he was amazed and a little upset.
“I never thought it would go viral, people making fun of me,” he said.
Thomas Torres said they reached out to media because he thought it was important for people to hear his brother’s side of the story.
“Maybe people will have more feeling knowing what this kid’s been through,” he said.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel
RSS