Hamidat Soliu, originally from Nigeria but lives in Manchester, was met with offensive language after she confronted a passenger who filmed her as she breast feed her baby
A creepy man shocked bus passengers after he recorded a mum breastfeeding her baby, refusing to delete the footage, and defended his actions “because he is English”.
Hamidat Soliu, 27, originally from Nigeria but lives in Manchester, began to feed her four-month-old daughter after she started to cry. To her surprise, she had been alerted by fellow travellers that someone was videoing her. The mum, who was on the way to visit her pal, was met with an angry response after she confronted the man and asked him to delete the video. But he excused his behaviour and said his heritage allowed him to do so.
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“All I wanted to do was feed my crying baby and not to have my rights violated – or be told by someone that he has the right to violate them because he’s white,” Hamidat said. The healthcare assistant explained that the man had ignored her request, so she began filming him back. Luckily, other passengers decided to step in to defend her, reports Manchester News.
Footage shows the man, wearing a hi-vis vest, being confronted by appalled passengers before he claims to have deleted the clip from his phone. When one passenger demands to see proof, the bloke replies: “F*** off you’re not touching my phone who do you think you are? You’re not the police.”
A second passenger then suggests checking the gallery on the man’s phone for proof the clip was deleted. The man replies: “F*** off, who do you think you are? I’m English… and I live here.” Hamidat says the man was later confronted by the bus driver and kicked off the bus. She reported the incident on Saturday, May 3, to police and says she has been left feeling “horrible” by it.
She said: “A voice reached out to me at the back [of the bus] and told me that the man was filming me breastfeeding and that he was zooming in on my boobs. I asked the man if he was recording me and to delete the video but he wasn’t answering – that’s when I picked up my phone and I started recording.
“When he was asked why he thought it was OK to film a breastfeeding mum, he said he has rights because he is English. How can you say you have rights to film a breastfeeding mum just because you’re English?”
Shaken by it, Hamidat says the interaction made her feel uncomfortable and as if “she’d done something wrong”. Greater Manchester Police has launched an investigation and says officers have contacted Hamidat. She added: “It’s been horrible. It made me feel as if I was doing something wrong by breastfeeding my baby when she was crying. It’s made me question myself as a mum and it shouldn’t be that way.”
After sharing two videos of the interaction on TikTok the clips went viral, racking up more than 5.7 million views, likes, shares and comments. One user wrote: “Anyone who says this lady shouldn’t breastfeed in public should never eat in public again. No restaurants, not even a sandwich walking down the road. How dare you eat in public when babies shouldn’t.”
Another commented: “To the men who stood up for this mum…there’s hope for mankind after all.” A third wrote: “You should be so proud of yourself for standing up for yourself. I can’t imagine how that ‘man’ made you feel.” A fourth person commented: “Breastfeeding is not the problem. The people sexualising it are.”
Danny Vaughan, Transport for Greater Manchester’s chief network officer, said: “Making public transport safer – and tackling gender-based violence in particular – is a key area of focus for the Greater Manchester TravelSafe Partnership. This was a clearly distressing incident for the passenger, and we will do whatever we can to support police with their investigation.”
A GMP spokesperson said: “We are aware of footage that is circulating online in relation to an incident which occurred on a bus travelling from the city centre to Ashton. Officers from our Transport Unit have been in contact with the victim, and we are investigating all lines of enquiry. No arrests have been made at this stage and it is believed to be an isolated incident. Anyone with any information is asked to call police on 101 quoting log 2491 03/05/25, or call Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.”