Woman who coughed at B.C. grocery store employee found guilty of assault

A Save-On-Foods sign, Cambie Street, Vancouver, June 17, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS IMAGES/Bayne Stanley

A woman has been found guilty of assault after she intentionally coughed on a grocery store employee in the early days of the pandemic in Campbell River.

The incident dates back to April 24, 2020, at the local Save On Foods grocery store.

At the time, provincial health regulations mandated that shoppers stay at least six feet apart from one another, and that grocery stores put a limit on how many customers were inside at a time.

No mask mandates were in effect.

The court heard from several Save On Foods employees that Kimberly Woolman walked into the store and asked why a section had been cordoned off.

Employee Jacqueline Poulton explained that the area was off limits because it was too small a space to accommodate the province's mandate of having customers stay six feet apart.

"When Ms. Poulton explained the store policy and requirement to comply with public health orders, Ms. Woolman told her COVID was not real and that it was stupid," said Judge Barbara Flewelling, who was summarizing Poulton's recollection of events.

"When asked if she would obey the social distancing rules, Ms. Woolman replied 'no.'"

Woolman continued to walk through the store, at which point Poulton says she followed the shopper while staying six feet away and repeatedly asking her to leave.

At one point, Poulton says Woolman suddenly stopped, turned around, leaned towards her and coughed at her face twice.

The woman then continued through the store, yelling that that COVID-19 was not real and asking to be left alone, according to Poulton.

The argument caused five employees to eventually gather around Woolman and escort her out of the store.

Staff told the court that they "encircled" her and moved her towards the exit. Upon getting to the exit, however, Woolman attempted to leave the store with her grocery cart, which contained several items she hadn't paid for yet.

One employee, Gord Dawson, stood in front of the cart and prevented her from leaving.

Dawson told the court that Woolman "kept trying to ram (the cart) into me… rocking it back and forth trying get me off so she could go around me," wrote Flewelling in her decision released April 17.

Eventually, Woolman gave up and left the store without the cart.

Woolman was later charged with causing a disturbance and assault against Poulton and Dawson.

Flewelling says Woolman's yelling, and the fact that five employees needed to escort her out of the store, met the threshold of causing a disturbance in a public place.

Meanwhile, the judge ruled that coughing at Poulton, given the time the offence occurred during the early days of the pandemic, constituted assault, while pushing the shopping cart into Dawson was also considered assault.

The judge says that prosecutors established "beyond a reasonable doubt" that all three offences occurred, based on testimony from multiple employees and surveillance video from the store.