Christian Cooper Condemns ‘Abhorrent’ Death Threats Targeting Woman Who Threatened Him in Viral Video: ‘Where’s the Logic in That?’

The African-American man who was threatened by a white woman in a Central Park altercation he captured on video called out her behavior as “definitely racist,” but expressed some sympathy for the deluge of outrage she has endured and condemned as “wholly inappropriate and abhorrent” the reported death threats she has received.

Christian Cooper, an avid bird-watcher, appeared on CNN’s Don Lemon Tonight on Tuesday to discuss the cellphone video he recorded of the woman, Amy Cooper (no relation), who he confronted for letting her dog illegally roam off-leash in an area popular with bird watchers. While he was filming her, she grew angry, charged at him, and then retreated, before calling 911 and hysterically claiming “an African-American man is threatening my life.”

After it was made public by Cooper’s sister, Melody, the video quickly went viral and the online backlash over Amy Cooper’s behavior swiftly resulted in her losing both her dog — reclaimed by the dog shelter because she roughly mishandled and choked the dog in the video — and her financial services job — which condemned racism in an official statement. Cooper has since apologized in a statement, claiming: “I’m not a racist. I did not mean to harm that man in any way.”

Lemon noted that he had invited her to appear on his show alongside the man she falsely accused, but she did not respond.

“Our producers reached out to her last night. We have not heard back from her today,” Lemon noted, before turning to Cooper. “What did you hope to — why did you hope to be on with her tonight?”

“Well, I don’t know that I hoped to be on with her tonight, but I was comfortable being on with her tonight and I hoped that it would bring some sort of closure to this whole thing because it really seems to have snowballed quite significantly,” Cooper told Lemon. “I’m not in her head, but that’s one reason why she is sort of in seclusion right now, because there’s been a lot of — I know I’ve had to deal with a lot of messaging and the messaging aimed at her has been quite significant. So I could see where that would be a little startling.”

“Some of the messaging, I am told, has been death threats. And that is wholly inappropriate and abhorrent and should stop immediately,” Cooper emphasized. “I find it strange that people who were upset that they— as they see it, and rightly, that she tried to bring death-by-cop down on my head would then turn around and try to put death threats on her head. Where is the logic in that? Where does that make any kind of sense?”

Lemon then asked if Cooper accepted her apology.

“I think her apology is sincere,” Cooper said. “I’m not sure that in that apology she recognizes that while she may not be or consider herself a racist, that particular act was definitely racist. And the fact that that was her recourse at that moment — granted, it was a stressful situation, a sudden situation. You know, maybe a moment of spectacularly poor judgment. But she went there and had this racist act that she did.”

“She understood the power she wielded at that moment to call police as a white woman on a black man as a scary black man,” Lemon pointed out. “‘I’m going to call the police and say an African-American man is…’ She understood that part of it. She had the wherewithal to understand that.”

“Exactly,” Cooper agreed. “She was looking for some way to get an edge in that situation and that’s where she went. And that ultimately did not help her. So, you know, is she a racist? I can’t answer that. Only she can answer that. And I would submit probably the only way she’s going to answer that is going forward, how she conducts herself and how she choose to reflect on the situation and examine it.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.