Black Dinner Party Guests Release Footage of Shocking Hose-Down
A group of prominent Black professionals who were allegedly hosed down at a Saturday night garden party by a white neighbor—a story first reported by The Daily Beast—have released video of a portion of the shocking incident and its aftermath.
In the one-minute clip, streams of water can be seen arcing over the picket fence separating the backyards belonging to Dr. Yves Duroseau and his wife Claude, who are Haitian-American, and Marcus Rosebrock, a German national who lives adjacent to their property in New York City’s Forest Hills neighborhood. About 15 revelers had gathered for a sit-down dinner last September to fête Rosevony Duroseau, Yves’ sister, on her 47th birthday.
“I’m videotaping the neighbor throwing water on everyone at Rose’s party,” the woman behind the camera can be heard saying as the horrified guests try to avoid getting soaked. “I am videotaping Rose’s neighbor throwing water on us.”
“That’s crazy!” says another. “He’s trying to fight!”
As the water pressure appears to intensify, someone shouts to the unseen provocateur, “We’re calling the cops!”
Another snippet, this one only 10 seconds long, shows partygoer Katya Dossous after she tried to reason with Rosebrock over the fence. In the footage, Dossous’ clothes are visibly soaked through.
“What happened?” an offscreen voice asks.
“I tried to talk to their neighbor, he walked back, picked up the hose, and hosed me down while I was talking to him,” Dossous replies. “That’s what happened.”
Rosevony, a Fordham-educated attorney who works as an asylum officer for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), had invited a few friends from law school, and the guest list contained a slew of influential power players. Among the guests were Rigo Morales, a successful music industry executive who co-founded the Recording Academy’s Black Music Collective, a lawyer from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, another from New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration, at least one public defender, two bank executives, a New Jersey public schools administrator, and Rosevony’s fiancé, the CEO of a cybersecurity firm in Washington, D.C.
Yves, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, made international news when he became the first physician in the U.S. to receive the COVID vaccine.
Even the caterer was a bold-face name, with chef Vanessa Cantave, 2011 winner of the Bravo cooking competition show, Rocco’s Dinner Party, providing the nine-course meal.
On Thursday, the Duroseaus, along with four of the guests who witnessed the spraying, held a news conference to release the video footage and formally announce the lawsuit they filed on Sept. 15.
“Despite the irrefutable proof, Marcus Rosebrock’s continued denial of the facts in this case demonstrate his lack of truthfulness, accountability, and his utter disregard for people of color,” Mina Q. Malik, who along with co-counsel Derek Sells is representing the Duroseaus and the other plaintiffs at the dinner party, told The Daily Beast. “It’s high time Mr. Rosebrock takes responsibility for his dehumanizing actions.”
Rosebrock has yet to file a formal response to the lawsuit, and his side of the story has not yet emerged.
His lawyer, Brandon Gillard, flatly denied that Rosebrock is a bigot, telling The Daily Beast, “Mr. Rosebrock denies any of the allegations in the complaint, and rejects any characterization that he is racist, or [that] his actions were racially motivated.”
White Neighbor Allegedly Hoses Down Prominent Black Dinner Party Guests
The group claims the attack occurred as things started to draw to a close around 9:50 p.m. Music was playing at a reasonable volume, the video clips show. That’s when an unidentified white woman entered the Duroseau home with a “large, menacing German Shepherd,” and “demanded that the music playing in the backyard be turned down,” according to a civil lawsuit filed earlier this month by the Duroseaus, the guests, and the caterers.
When they didn’t move fast enough, the party “abruptly and forcefully ended” when Rosebrock, a 48-year-old father of two, turned his hose on the celebration, the lawsuit alleges. It created “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,” the suit says
Rosebrock then sprayed the party several more times, drenching and humiliating all involved, according to the lawsuit.
“I was appalled and disgusted that water hosing and German Shepherds were being used against people of color in New York City in 2022,” Malik told The Daily Beast shortly after filing the suit. “I was in utter disbelief.”
The group is demanding undetermined monetary damages from Rosebrock, alleging in their suit that he and the woman with the dog, identified in court filings only as “Jane Doe,” caused them mental anguish and emotional distress.
Everyone who was there is now “deeply scarred,” Malik said. All “feel degraded and humiliated, and they were made to feel less than human.”
In addition to the civil suit, the Duroseaus filed a police report the night of the incident but detectives have not followed up to investigate it as a possible hate crime, according to Sells, chair of The Cochran Firm.
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