A woman eating lunch outside a cafe on Manhattan's Upper East Side repeatedly asked a man seated at her table to leave, telling him again and again, “Can you leave?” The exchange, captured on video and later posted to TikTok, has racked up attention online after internet sleuths claimed to identify the man within minutes of the clip circulating.
According to The Union Star, the raw footage was posted by TikTok account @lifestylee_t, and the woman's caption said the encounter happened a few months before she posted about it. In her caption, the woman also said she asked the NYPD why the man was still out there, per the outlet's reporting.
Internet sleuth Michael McWhorter said he found the man's identity in about two minutes and sent the information to the woman who posted the video. McWhorter later posted a stitch identifying the man, describing the situation as one in which the man sat down at a cafe and sexually harassed a woman. He said he identified the man as Dexter Betancourt, adding that women deal with this kind of behavior too often.
A 2025 Subway Arrest Surfaces in the Comments
McWhorter's identification pointed to earlier coverage of Betancourt tied to a subway-station incident. The New York Post published two articles about Betancourt in June 2025, reporting that he was arrested after approaching a 30-year-old woman at around 1 a.m. at the 14th Street station, where he was 37 years old at the time.
Per PIX11, police alleged that when the woman refused to talk to him, “he allegedly tried to kiss her feet,” and that he performed a lewd act in front of her before fleeing on a northbound L train. Betancourt was arrested on June 24, 2025, and charged with public lewdness in connection with the June 18 incident.
The Daily News also reported that Betancourt was granted supervised release after his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court. The New York Post, meanwhile, reported that he was released without bail. No charge or stated outcome has been reported for the cafe encounter itself, and the woman's claim in her caption that the man had harassed women in New York since 2013 has not been independently verified.
Online Reaction Pours In
Within a day, a second clip naming the man from the 2025 subway arrest had drawn nearly 2,800 comments, with commenters debating whether the woman had been too polite in the exchange, according to the same Union Star report. One commenter wrote that she's being “waaaaaaay too nice,” while another echoed that sentiment, writing “you acting to nice…”
Other commenters urged women to say “get away from me!” rather than “can you leave,” and advised carrying pepper spray at all times. Some reactions leaned into exasperation, with one commenter asking, “Where is Olivia Benson when you need her?” and another simply writing, “What is wrong with some people!?”
The clip ends without showing a resolution, and the article notes that no charge has been reported over the cafe incident specifically. The source video is cited as an Instagram reel, and the full circumstances of what happened after the woman's repeated requests remain unclear from the available footage.
