Moment NYC pastor grabs female congregant and shoves her off pulpit
Shocking moment controversial NYC bling pastor grabs female congregant and shoves her off pulpit after row over $40M lawsuit against YouTubers
- Bishop Lamar Whitehead, 44, was caught on video giving his sermon on Sunday when a woman in the congregation interrupted him
- He asked the woman if she wanted to give the sermon instead, but when she appeared on screen walking past the pulpit, Whitehead grabbed her by the neck
- He then appeared to shove her out of frame before resuming his sermon as if nothing had happened
- In a follow-up video on Facebook Live, Whitehead said the woman was charging at his wife and daughter before he intervened
- He suggested the woman was planted there by two YouTubers he is suing for $40 million after they claimed he stole from his congregation
A shocking video shows the moment a controversial Brooklyn pastor grabbed a female congregant and shoved her off the pulpit during Sunday services.
Bishop Lamar Whitehead, 44, was caught on his church’s livestream giving his sermon at the Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries in Canarsie Sunday morning, when a woman in the congregation interrupted him.
He then asked the woman to give the sermon instead, but when she appeared on screen walking past the pulpit, Whitehead could be seen grabbing her by the neck as he shoves her out of frame.
The flashy bishop — apparently dressed in a loud Dior suit — then resumed his sermon as if nothing happened, only to later release a response on Facebook in which he suggested the altercation came in retaliation to lawsuits he filed against two YouTubers who accused him of stealing from his congregation.
Their allegations were made after a shocking video emerged showing Whitehead being targeted by armed thugs who stole $400,000 worth of swag.
Video posted to YouTube shows the moment Bishop Lamar Whitehead apparently shoved a woman after she interrupted his sermon Sunday
The 44-year-old bishop is known for his flashy lifestyle, and recently sued two YouTubers who accused him of stealing from his congregation. He is pictured here sporting a Gucci blazer at the Billionaires Row and Dingers Squad VIP dinner in July
The video from Sunday’s service, which was posted to YouTube shortly after the incident, begins with Whitehead giving a sermon about Leah before discussing the allegations against him.
‘All we hear is Bishop Whitehead is a liar, all we hear is Apostle Chief, Apostle Bishop Whitehead is a scammer. All we hear is that Leaders of Tomorrow is going to fall,’ he tells his congregation.
Whitehead then suggests that the people who are making these allegations are ‘snapshotting and shooting right now, they screen recording right now.’
At that point, he seems to get interrupted as he abruptly stops his sermon to listen to someone in the crowd.
‘Let ’em record, let ’em record,’ he tells his congregation, before deciding to take a ‘pause’ as a woman could be heard screaming at him.
‘You want to come preach?’ the bishop asks her. ‘You want to come preach, come up here. I’m gonna make you famous, yes Lord.’
He then starts asking the congregation to praise Jesus, while speaking in tongues, only to end his prayer by saying: ‘Now remove her out of here, move her out of here.’
Whitehead then seems to want to move on from the situation, telling his congregation: ‘Let’s give Jesus a round of applause, y’all.’
He continues to repeat the message ‘while they take the pictures.
‘Take the pictures, take the pictures,’ he eggs them on.
That is when a woman in a brown and pink floral top enters from the left side of the screen as Whitehead gets increasingly close to her. He could then be seen lifting his hands at her head as he pushes her out of frame.
‘Go over here, go over here,’ he tells the woman. ‘Grab her out.’
He could later be heard telling her off-screen: ‘Press whatever charges you want, you’re not going to come in my space. I feel threatened.’
When he comes back to the altar a few moments later, he simply says: ‘Let’ get back to the word of God.’
The altercation on Sunday came as Whitehead was giving his sermon at the Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries in Canarsie, Brooklyn and was interrupted by a woman in the congregation
He asked security at one point to escort the woman out of the church
As she approached the altar, he got increasingly close to the woman before he grabbed her
DailyMail.com has reached out to the New York Police Department for comment.
But according to TMZ, the pastor and the unidentified woman were brought to a local precinct for questioning following the altercation.
He has reportedly not been charged with any wrongdoing for the incident.
In a follow-up video on Facebook Live, Whitehead could be seen driving home in his Rolls Royce with his Dior suit next to him as he tried to clarify what happened — suggesting the woman was threatening his family.
‘I know that everyone’s building a narrative, but it is what it is,’ he said, explaining: ‘We had some visitor in the church, and they were sent by two nobodies — two bloggers who are nobodies.
‘And they were sent into my church to disrupt my church,’ he alleged.
Whitehead then explained that he has ‘lawsuits out, and when retaliation is retaliation, this is what it is.
‘They came in videoing, and it was a whole set-up,’ he alleged, before claiming that the woman in the video was charging at his wife and baby.
‘That’s when I took action and I grabbed the young woman and I escorted her out,’ he said.
The bishop went on to claim that he has more video and audio to prove that and claimed: ‘I am a gentleman, I am pro-woman.’
He said he simply did ‘what any man and any pastor would do’ in that situation, denying that he ‘choked her.’
‘All they want is followers,’ he said about the bloggers who allegedly orchestrated the incident. ‘When people are irrelevant, they now have to create content.’
‘It’s an attack on who I am,’ he continued. ‘I am not a person who would try to hurt anyone.’
Still, he warned: ‘You’re not going to threaten or jeopardize any of my members.
‘Nobody’s going to put a hand on my family. I’m going to protect my family.’
In a follow-up livestream on Facebook, Whitehead could be seen driving home in his Rolls Royce with his Dior suit next to him as he tried to clarify what happened
The flashy bishop claims the woman was charging after his wife and daughter before he intervened and grabbed her
Whitehead had filed twin lawsuits seeking $40 million in damages against YouTubers DeMario Jives and Larry Reid in New York earlier this month, after they accused him of stealing from his congregation.
Jives allegedly told his 80,000 followers the pastor has been wearing the same jewelry taken from the pulpit and said: ‘This n—a is out here drug dealing.’
Reid was also accused in one of the suits of saying the bishop scams people out of money and claimed Whitehead would soon be ‘locked up’.
The new lawsuits allege the two men have cost Whitehead ‘business deals, church members, and income’.
One reads: ‘As a result of (the defendants’) conduct, Plaintiff lost business deals, church members and income.’
It adds: ‘(Defendants) are liable to Plaintiff for defamation, libel per se and slander per se.’
His attorney said there will be ‘many more’ similar lawsuits coming to ‘aggressively’ prosecute people making ‘defamatory statements’ about Whitehead.
The lawsuit aimed at Jives alleges he said on his YouTube channel that the bishop ‘is wearing the same jewelry that (he) got robbed in’.
The other accuses Reid of claiming that the pastor ‘scammed people out of money’ and ‘will be locked up in about three months’.
DeMario Jives, who has 80,000 YouTube subscribers, is being sued for $20 million by Whitehead for telling his audience the bishop was ‘drug dealing’
Larry Reid, who Whitehead is also suing for $20 million, allegedly told his online audience that the blingy bishop scams people out of money and will soon be behind bars
Their allegation came after a wild video showed Whitehead being robbed at his church on July 24 while preaching to his congregation wearing a maroon suit, long gold chain and a large ring on each finger.
He was videoed telling his congregants: ‘How many of you have lost your faith because you saw somebody else die?’
He is then seen going down on his knees when the robbers approach and can be heard saying: ‘All right, all right.’
The men were then seen circling around the stage as they robbed the bishop, his wife and the congregation.
He later said on Instagram that the robbers aimed a gun at his back while they took his bishops cross and the jewelry he was wearing from on top of and under his shirt.
Bishop Whitehead said: ‘I told everyone to get down. I didn’t know if they wanted to shoot the church up or were coming for a robbery.
‘They took all my wife’s jewelry and all my jewelry.’
The churchman also said he ran after the robbers and saw them take off their masks and get away in a white Mercedes.
Police confirmed that the robbery stole $400,000-worth of jewelry in Canarsie around 11.15am.
Whitehead later said he may have been targeted due to the help he provided accused murdered Andrew Abdullah.
The 25-year-old allegedly killed a Goldman Sachs employee on the subway earlier this year by shooting him at point blank range.
The pastor turned up with his $350,000 Rolls-Royce and wearing a Fendi blazer to negotiate the surrender of the thug.
Whitehead wore a Fendi blazer as he spoke to the press outside the 5th Precinct where Andrew Abdullah was brought in for questioning. He is a close ally of NYC mayor Eric Adams
The $350,000 Rolls Royce that the minister arrived in at the Fifth Precinct in Manhattan. Whitehead is also believed to have been seen in Brooklyn in a Bentley and Maserati
Whitehead was also accused of stealing the lifesavings of one of his congregants, according to a separate Brooklyn lawsuit detailed by the NY Post.
Pauline Anderson, 56, accused Whitehead of talking her into handing over her lifesavings of $90,000 on the understand that he would then buy and renovate a home for her.
The Bishop also reportedly said he would pay the woman $100 a month because the savings had been her sole source of income.
But the monthly allowance was paid just once and Whitehead eventually stopped responding to inquiries from Anderson about the status of her house.
He later allegedly told the woman that he had invested her money into his company and was not obligated to return it to her.
The spiritual leader previously spent five years behind bars for charges of identity fraud and grand larceny.
But a prison sentence and public robbery haven’t stopped him from becoming close with NYC Mayor Eric Adams and generally carrying on with his extravagant lifestyle.
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