#Man spits at coffee shop owner after being booted for not wearing mask

A patron at a Virginia coffee shop flew off the handle when the shop owner told him to leave because he wasn’t wearing a mask, according to a report.

The unidentified man stormed out of Abyssinia Market and Coffee House in Alexandria, but not before spitting on store owner Lily Damtew — and returned later to hurl a bowl of food at the shop, the Alexandria Times reported Thursday.

“For me, wearing a mask is protecting me and then my family and friends and everyone around me,” Damtew told the outlet. “I have very sensitive customers. (Most of my) customers are neighborhood people. I know them well. I’m protecting the community.”

The ugly encounter unfolded around 7:40 a.m. Sunday, when the man walked into the Jefferson Street coffee house without a mask, ignoring a sign posted on the door saying the face coverings are required.

“He’s like, ‘I’m not wearing a mask. I don’t have to wear a mask anywhere I go,’” Damtew said. “‘Virginia doesn’t support this. Alexandria doesn’t support this.’ And I said, ‘Yes, there’s a law if you go into certain places you have to wear a mask.’ And after that he got very upset.”

“At that point (he said), ‘You people, if we do this to you, you people,’ ” said Damtew, who is black. “It was getting worse so I said, ‘Please leave,’ and he wasn’t leaving. He said a lot of things. He used the B-word. He used the F-word. He called me ugly something.”

Eventually, the man — whom she described as tall, skinny and white — left after she held the door open, but spat on her feet as he walked past her.

Damtew, who was alone in the shop, called the police and a neighbor, who was only identified as Jean.

“She was crying on the phone when she asked me to come down,” Jean told the Times. “By the time we got there, she had calmed down a little bit and she was very upset, but she told us what happened, that someone had come in when she was alone and … she’s a small, petite woman.”

“‘You people,’” she said. “Obviously, we understood what he meant. He was white. She was black.”

Police responded and spoke to Damtew, then set out to find the culprit. That’s when he came back.

“My back was to the window and I heard a bang type thing,” Jean said. “He had thrown, we don’t know what it was, the officer thought it was chicken and rice, but threw all this food all over the door, the picture window, the table that was out there.”

“I jumped because of the noise,” she said. “And by the time I looked around, he was gone. We could see  him running down the street.”

Cops eventually caught up with the food-hurling assailant and said he was at a local facility “receiving services,” but did not identify him.

Damtew has kept the shop closed since the disturbing incident and is considering shutting down for good, she told the outlet.

“Knowing that I’m there all the time by myself and even though I know I can call police I was just thinking it might be too late,” she said. “What if this guy comes back and does something else.”

However, she said the outpouring of support from the community might eventually change her mind.