A woman was caught in a now-viral video coughing intentionally in the face of a cancer patient at a Pier 1 store in Florida amid the ongoing CCP virus crisis.
The suspect has been identified as 52-year-old Debra Hunter of Fernandina Beach and was “becoming increasingly belligerent” at the store, Heather Sprague, who recorded the video, wrote in a caption.
Shortly after she started filming Hunter, the woman told her, “I think I’ll get real close to you and cough on you then,” before coughing directly in her face. “How about that?” she added.
Several other people also shopping at the Pier 1 store located in the St. John’s Town Center in Jacksonville can be heard saying “no” and “no way” after the encounter.
As Hunter is walking toward the exit of the store with her young daughter, the footage shows her yelling, “You’re lucky I don’t kick you.”
Sprague has filed a police report against the woman, First Coast News reported. “Battery—touch or strike, no injury” was cited as the offense on the police report.
Sprague said she is a brain tumor patient at the Mayo Clinic and had an appointment in the Town Center area on the day of her encounter with Hunter. She noticed a pair of unattended young children wandering around the store for an extended period of time.
“It became apparent that they belonged to a woman at the register who was becoming increasingly belligerent,” she wrote in a lengthy Facebook post, explaining the encounter with Hunter.
“She was screaming at, swearing, insulting, and threatening the staff as she demanded to return an item she didn’t have with her, just a photo of the item on her phone,” she continued.
Sprague noted that the staff remained very “professional and respectful,” but were unable to help with returning the item, as Hunter didn’t have it with her.
“She continued to rage, all the while her poor little boy was squirming and asking for a bathroom, which she would have needed to leave the store to find. When she positioned herself so the clerks couldn’t exit the checkout area and screamed that she would stay right there, yelling as loud as she wanted, until all their customers left,” Sprague said.
At that moment she decided to record the encounter, which caught Hunter’s attention as Sprague pulled out her phone and began filming.
“I did not speak, react, or engage. Simply stood to document the behavior. When bullies are faced with accountability they must acknowledge the unacceptability of their actions,” Sprague said in the post.
The encounter came as Florida is seeing a record spike in COVID-19 cases. Sprague said after the encounter she was going to get herself tested for the virus. “I’m off to find a COVID test, thanks Karen *cough, cough*,” she wrote.
