Vermont Woman Accused Of Flashing Gun Over Social Distancing Rules

No matter how dumb or nonsensical you might think the current social distancing measures in place might be, if you whip out a gun because you’re mad about them, you’re going to get arrested.

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That’s what happened to one woman in Vermont, who’s now accused of reckless endangerment after allegedly pulling a gun on a clerk at a country store in the small town of Walden.

To open up shop during the coronavirus, Butch’s Harvest’ore in Walden made a large sign to promote social distancing. It urges customers coming in for an ice cream cone to stay safe.

“It’s been working very well,” store owner Hazel Greaves said.

Until this past Sunday when, according to a police affidavit, customer Carie Legus, 58, of Walden, started complaining about the sign and tried to knock it down.

“The lady walked up and was pulling at the sign and shaking at the sign,” Greaves said.

Greaves was not there when it happened but she said her employee was alone and asked Legus to stop. What Legus allegedly did next shocked Greaves and her employee.

“So then she pulled out her gun and pointed it at her,” Greaves said.

Legus then left the scene and was later taken into custody by police.

Legus, who’s an attorney, denied that she pulled a gun on store employees while in court representing herself during a hearing regarding a mental health evaluation. If there’s no surveillance video and no other eyewitnesses, prosecutors may have a hard time obtaining a conviction on the reckless endangerment charge, but for now the accusation by the store employee still stands.

There’s a simple solution when you run across a policy in a business that you disagree with; leave the store and walk away. If you’re still mad about what you perceive as an injustice after you’ve given yourself time to calm down, you always have the option of hopping on social media and writing a snarky post about the policy.

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What you shouldn’t do is freak out on store employees, and threatening their life over a policy meant to protect them from customers with the coronavirus is absolutely insane (which may be why authorities wanted Legus to undergo a mental health evaluation).

According to a recent survey, about half of all Americans say their mental health has taken a hit during the coronavirus shutdowns, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the number is higher. That’s understandable, given the economic damage and the loss of life that have rocked the United States over the past eight weeks. Even so, half of us haven’t been accused of pulling a gun on a store clerk over social distancing policies, so clearly some of us are dealing with the stress better than others.

I hope that Carie Legus gets any help she might need for her mental health, and I hope that incidents like this aren’t repeated elsewhere. No matter how dumb a store’s social distancing policies might be, drawing your gun because of them is even dumber.

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