“Sad memory,” he told NewsCenter 7’s Layron Livingston on Thursday night.
But since the video went viral this week, Dubose has experienced an outpouring of support from the community.
He enjoyed a free lunch with friends and supporters at Bada Bing Pizzeria on Friday.
Dubose had not seen the video until this week, his friend and neighbor Matreka Nache said.
She received more than a dozen messages from strangers after she and Dubose were interviewed on WHIO. People as far away as Atlanta, Ga., and her hometown in Illinois had seen the story.
Dubose and his friends old and new had pepperoni pizza, garlic knots and his favorite, Mountain Dew, for lunch. Dubose talked about how the city can lift itself up if people would extend more respect to one another.
Nache looks after Dubose and said she approached the workers at the tire shop Thursday after seeing the video for the first time.
“Nobody deserves to be treated like that,” she said.
The shop’s owner, James Payton, calls what happened an ugly prank — the video was posted in May 2014 but shared numerous times this week — and offered his apology to Dubose.
“We let him clean the trash out of the office, give him a little bit of change from time to time, coffee. They just got comfortable with him, in my opinion,” Payton said.
The owner said Dubose has always been welcome at the shop and always will. He said he addressed the video months ago when he first saw it.
Thursday, he said the backlash forced him to give the two employees the next two weeks off.
Dubose said he thinks the men who pranked him should clean up their act, but he doesn’t want to see them punished.
A lot of people who saw the video admired him for that attitude, said Michelle Roberts, who met Dubose for the first time at Bada Bing.
“You got to,” he said about turning the other cheek. “Everywhere I go, I give love and respect. Sometimes you don’t get that in return,” Dubose said.
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