Cancer patient and mother of 10, Heather Sprague, posted a now-viral video on Facebook of a woman in a Jacksonville, Florida Pier 1 home furnishings store coughing on her after Sprague began recording the woman's behavior.
In a Facebook post that has since been shared over 11,000 times, Sprague said that she observed the woman's two unattended children wandering the store while Sprague killed some time waiting for a medical appointment.
She later realized the two children belonged to a woman standing at the register.
"[She] was becoming increasingly belligerent. 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," Sprague wrote.
When the staff refused to issue the woman a refund, Sprague claims the woman "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."
At this point, Sprague began recording the woman, at a distance and silently, Sprague claims. The woman turned her attention from the clerks to Sprague.
"Do you really need this? What do you want me to do? Post it for you?" the woman asked, before defiantly sticking two middle fingers at the camera and saying, "How about that?"
"I think I'll get real close to you and cough on you then," the woman says. "How's that?" The woman then coughed on Sprague before turning away and saying, "*sshole."
The woman then picked up her bag, swung her hair and declared, "Let's go" to her children.
"I did not speak, react, or engage," Sprague wrote. "Simply stood to document the behavior. When bullies are faced with accountability they must acknowledge the unacceptability of their actions. Within 30 seconds of filming her tirade was done and she left the poor staff in peace."
"I'm off to find a Covid test," Sprague wrote. "Thanks Karen*cough, cough*"
Karen is probably not the unknown woman's name. Karen is a slang term for a white woman who acts in an overly entitled or demanding way that would go beyond the scope of what others consider appropriate or necessary.
Sprague has a brain tumor and is receiving care at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville.
This is merely the most recent incident of a belligerent white woman coughing on someone recording her. Police in San Jose are seeking a woman who purposefully coughed on a Latino woman's baby.
In early April, police in Atlanta, Georgia, released video footage of a woman who allegedly coughed on a family as part of a COVID-19-linked social media stunt.
