A woman accused of deliberately coughing on a baby during an argument with the child’s mother is being sought by police in California.
The suspect was standing in front of the mum and one-year-old son in the queue for a frozen yoghurt parlour when the alleged incident took place on June 12.
The woman, described as white and in her 60s, allegedly got upset with the mother, named as Mireya Mora, for not maintaining safe social distancing.
CCTV footage of the confrontation at the Yogurtland outlet appears to show the suspect, dressed all in white, pulling down her mask to cough aggressively in the direction of a pushchair.
“The suspect was upset the female was not maintaining proper social distancing, so the suspect removed her face mask, got close to the baby’s face, and coughed 2-3 times,” the San Jose Police Department said in a statement following preliminary investigations into the incident.
The mother said she believed the incident was race-related.
"I believe this woman may be racist because the family in front of her is white,” Ms Mora told San Francisco news channel KGO.
“Me and my grandma are Hispanic and she started telling me about my distance and harassing me and my son once I started speaking Spanish to my grandma," she explained.
Ms Mora said her son developed a slight fever following the alleged confrontation but that he otherwise seemed healthy and she was hopeful he wouldn’t contract coronavirus.
“If he were to get sick, it’s just, I can’t even imagine,” she said.
Ms Mora added: "Coughing on someone's face – she did it on purpose.
“I's not like she did it on accident, oh cough, cough – no she purposely coughed on my son's face … It happened so quick I was in shock.
“She got close, she took off her mask, and she coughed three times super hard on my son's face.”
The San Jose Police Department have asked the public for help in identifying the female suspect. Investigations continue.
