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BELLEVUE, Wash. (KOMO) — Authorities said a man is facing charges after he attacked a bartender with a meat cleaver due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Michael Dousa, 58, allegedly lifted a meat cleaver as he lunged at a bartender after he was asked to leave a Bellevue Applebee when he could not provide proof of vaccination.
Detectives said when Dousa came out he screamed and waved the knife.
When the bartender asked him to leave, police said Dousa chased after him with the cleaver raised above his head, but the bartender closed the door before he was hit.
Two Applebee customers, siblings Angela and Levi Hudson, said it was heartbreaking when people still didn’t understand the impact of the pandemic.
“We’ve had family who got sick and died from COVID,” Angela Hudson said. “It’s a little frustrating to see people coming in without wearing a mask and being violent.”
Levi Hudson said he doesn’t think violence is ever the answer.
“I don’t think you should be violent because I think it’s one of the most ridiculous things you can do,” he said. “You don’t help people by being violent.”
Just weeks ago, prosecutors said a woman named Angela Nommensen was seen on surveillance video repeatedly refusing to wear her mask inside a gas station.
When the clerk forced her out, she pointed a gun at him.
Prosecutors are seeing more and more reports of these types of crimes.
“Maybe it’s because people are so close to the end of the pandemic that they’re growing frustrated that we’re so close and it’s not being done,” said Casey McNerthney, gatekeeper. Word from the King County District Attorney’s Office.
“But anyway, when you pull a meat cleaver on somebody, when you pull out a gun at a gas station, and we can prove that case, you’re going to be charged for that.”
Dousa is now charged with felony assault. Prosecutors said he already had two pending assault charges in an unrelated case from July.
Nommensen pleaded not guilty to criminal harassment.
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