Bachelorette party guest coughs on server over COVID rules, Nashville restaurant says
A woman who wasn’t wearing a mask at a bachelorette party is accused of coughing on a restaurant server after the group was told they couldn’t sit together because of social distancing guidelines to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Now police are investigating.
The incident occurred Saturday night at The Mockingbird, an American-style restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee, the Metro Nashville Police Department confirmed to McClatchy News. A police report for simple assault was filed the following day.
According to a Facebook post by the restaurant’s co-owner, Mikey Corona, on the page “Nashville Hospitality Professionals,” ten women at a bachelorette party made reservations at The Mockingbird — and then “threw a fit because we couldn’t sit them at one long continuous table due to phase 2 restrictions,” which limit the number of guests at a single table to six people.
“She knew what she was doing,” Corona told WZTV, referring to the woman who he says purposefully coughed. “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and you’re going to cough on somebody? That is assault.”
The incident is under investigation but no charges have been filed, police told McClatchy News.
Metro Nashville police said 10 individuals went to the restaurant Aug. 1 but could not be seated together because of social distancing restrictions. Another server who did not seem to be involved in the discussion was bringing drinks to a nearby table when one of the women “deliberately coughed” on the server and drinks, police said.
The group, from Mobile, Alabama, were seated at two tables next to each other, WKRG reported.
Corona said in the Facebook post the women “began to defy the rules and pull the tables together themselves” after they were seated. When staff members asked them to stop, the group — many of whom weren’t reportedly wearing masks — “got up and stormed out,” according to the Facebook post.
On her way out, one of the women “turned her head and coughed a few times on one of our team members,” the post states.
“That is considered assault and we are not taking it lightly,” Corona said.
Two of the women returned to the restaurant to apologize, WKRG reported. Police were called but reportedly didn’t arrive until after the group had left.
The incident was, however, caught on the restaurant’s surveillance cameras, according to WZTV. Corona attached still images from those cameras to his Facebook post in the hopes of finding the culprit. The post has been shared 1,500 times since it first appeared Sunday morning.
In the meantime, the employee who was coughed at will have to be tested and quarantined and is staying away from family members, Corona told WKRN.
A few of the women identified in the Facebook post have denied the allegations, WKRG reported.
“That is not the full story of what happened and we are now all receiving backlash and harassment because of things that have been said that aren’t true,” one woman, who is not named, told the TV station.
As of Monday, Corona said he plans to reach out to the mayor’s office for clearer guidance on how to enforce the mask mandate with unruly guests.
“Be careful out there,” he said in the post. “We are all just trying to survive in this wackiness.”
This story was originally published August 4, 2020 at 2:03 PM with the headline "Bachelorette party guest coughs on server over COVID rules, Nashville restaurant says."
