Singapore — An angry anti-masker caused a ruckus at a coffee shop in Sembawang on Tuesday afternoon (Jul 6).
An older man, who appeared to be Caucasian, was heard yelling at other people who tried to get him to wear his mask at around 2.30 pm at a drink stall at Block 406 near Sembawang Drive.
He only stopped yelling when the police came and intervened.
A 30-second video of the incident was caught on camera by an onlooker and was featured on Stomp, a crowd-sourced news site.
The older man, with a mask around his left wrist, shouted, “I’m angry! I’m very angry,” whilst taking an aggressive stance against a younger man who was speaking to him.
At one point, another man behind him can be seen in the video taking a step backwards.
Later, he can be heard saying, “I’m patient! I’m very patient.”
The person who had sent in the video told Stomp the older man had been shouting at the staff of the beverage stall and was disturbing others in the coffee shop.
But the younger man stepped up to the beverage stall’s counter to talk with the angry older man and asked him to stop shouting.
However, the man did not leave and continued to refuse to put on his mask until the police got there.
The police, who had been alerted to a dispute in the area at around 2:47 pm, told the older and younger men to keep the peace, and no other threats and assaults occurred.
The older man is just one in a spate of anti-maskers Singapore has seen since the beginning of the pandemic, although not all are as cooperative when the law is enforced.
In another incident last month, a man’s rude behaviour on the train was caught on video wherein he asked a fellow passenger who had requested him to put his mask on properly, “Are you a police? Or police dog?”
The video was posted on the Wake Up, Singapore Instagram account on Sunday (Jun 20) and had been submitted by a netizen going by the name “Sakura.”
She wrote that she noticed a man in a grey shirt and black pants speaking loudly, with his mask under his nose and mouth, covering only his chin.
“He mocked passengers around as ”Phubber” (Phone + snubber = Phubber) and judged them, loudly,” Sakura added.
When tensions escalated as some passengers reminded him to put his mask on properly, she wrote that she had reached her “tolerance limit” and decided to film the encounter. /TISG
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