A video has gone viral of a bikini barista smashing a customer’s windshield with a hammer after he threw drinks toward her in South Seattle, Washington. The employee claimed the man made threatening comments to her.
On Tuesday, a man went to get coffee at the Taste of Heaven Espresso shop. According to the owner of the coffee shop, the customer ordered a 32-ounce coffee and a 24-ounce water, which totaled about $22.
Emma Lee, the owner and sole employee of the coffee shop, said the man became outraged over the price of the two drinks.
Lee told KCPQ, “No one is forcing you to come here. The argument that he didn’t know or was scammed doesn’t hold up. The prices are listed. You don’t get to name your own price.”
Video shows the man getting out of his car and escalating the situation.
She said that other customers attempted to calm the man down for about 10 minutes.
In the video, the man is heard saying, “Nobody’s going to miss you,” which Lee felt was a threat.
“Oh, okay so you have no problem harming me, you’re making that clear,” she told KIRO-TV.
“It was a threat after screaming, spitting, and trying to pry open the window, I felt in danger,” Lee claimed.
Suddenly, the irate customer threw the drinks at Lee.
Lee responded by grabbing a hammer, leaning out the drive-through window, and smashing the windshield of the customer’s car.
Surveillance video of the confrontation can be seen here.
“It’s one thing to yell, it’s one thing to get mad, it’s one thing to even be outside of your car and try to threaten me,” Lee stated. “But to actually have the action behind it, it changed things for me where I was like ‘oh no.'”
Lee called the customer’s actions “disgusting.”
She said, “Why should this kind of interaction be expected because of the environment?”
Lee added, “Disrespect and violence are two different things. I can handle the disrespect, the violence is like a hard, that’s where the line is crossed.”
The coffee shop owner said she was acting in self-defense.
Lee asked, “It’s okay for him to be outraged about the price of his drinks, enough to assault me, but it’s not appropriate for me to respond?”
She defended her actions by saying, “I personally think that you thought you were going to throw drinks on me and ruin my day, you’re going to pay for a new windshield and it’s going to ruin your day.”
Lee said the man refused to leave the parking lot where the Taste of Heaven Espresso shop is located, so she called the police.
Police arrived at the coffee shop.
“The police came, and they got him to leave. It was understood that what happened is, he assaulted me, and I responded,” Lee said.
Seattle police said no arrests were made in the incident.
Lee has since filed charges for misdemeanor assault.
The customer is banned from the stand. He could take Lee to small claims court to make her pay the cost of his smashed windshield.
While some say the bikini barista’s actions were too harsh, Lee said that women have the right to defend themselves.
“I know so many women that haven’t defended themselves in situations they definitely should’ve and could have because we know that the repercussion more likely than not is going to fall on the woman that responds to the violence than the initial violence inflicted,” Lee explained.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!