A video of a woman coughing on a couple who asked her to wear a mask has inspired outrage all over the internet.
The incident occurred in Whitefish, Montana in a parking lot outside a grocery store over the weekend.
The video shows a woman yelling at the man filming, trying to determine which car is his.
She then begins filming him with her phone before charging up to him and loudly coughing and grunting into his and his wife's faces before calling him a "fuc*ing moron." The man replies calmly:
"You just coughed in my wife's face. You're going to jail, ma'am."
To which the woman yells:
“You don't go to jail for not wearing a mask, you moron!"
The woman then gets in her car, and the man filming stands behind it to keep her there while they wait for police to come. The woman begins backing up her car, and the man drops his phone, seems to stumble and can be heard yelling, "Watch out!"
In an account given to NBC Montana, the man detailed what led up to the incident: The woman featured in the video was harassing and cursing at an elderly couple inside the grocery store who requested that she socially distance from them. The man filming spoke up on their behalf. When the woman then followed the elderly couple out to the parking lot, the man intervened when the couple asked him to call the police.
The man also confirmed to NBC Montana that, as appears to occur at the end of the video, the woman did in fact hit him with her car not once but twice. He added that he broke her back windshield on her second attempt.
On social media, people were appalled by what they saw in the video.
It is possible the woman could face criminal charges for coughing on the couple: doing so is considered assault in many places, and on a national level, coronavirus is considered a "biological agent" in the United States.
Because of this, people who deliberately cough on others as the woman in this video did could be charged with terrorism. Two people have already been charged with terrorism-related offenses for doing so.
