A woman who coughed on a cancer patient has been sentenced to 30 days in jail.
According to The Huffington Post, Debra Hunter has been ordered by Duval County Court Judge James Ruth in Jacksonville in Florida to pay a fine of £500 and serve six months probation.
Hunter is also required to participate in a mental health evaluation along with anger management.
She was also ordered to cover the costs of victim Heather Sprague's COVID-19 test, whose face she coughed directly into in a video that was widely circulated on social media last year.
The Huffington Post reports that Hunter was arrested last June after she was recorded deliberately coughing on Sprague during an argument with employees inside a supermarket.
In Sprague's video, which you can view above, Hunter can be seen making a rude gesture to Sprague before walking up to her and threatening to cough on her and then did so when Sprague refused to desist her recording.
Sprague, who was later diagnosed with cancer, told the judge at Hunter's trial that she was left very anxious in the aftermath of the incident because she was concerned that she had contracted COVID, stating:
"I worried for the health and safety of my children, and wondered how in the world I could possibly isolate to protect them - in a household of 12 - if I had been intentionally infected."
Meanwhile, according to FirstCoast News, Hunter argued that she and her husband had endured a number of debilitating hardships prior to the incident in question, including losing many of their personal possessions in a devastating house fire.
However, Judge Ruth was unsympathetic and said in her sentencing statement: "Her children didn’t create this problem and her husband didn’t.
"She talked about how it changed her world and she was getting nastygrams on Facebook and things of that nature and they can’t go to their country club or wherever.
"But I have yet to see any expression or a significant expression on her regret about the impact it had on the victim in this case!"
