A fight broke out at an Alberta, Canada service station earlier this week after a customer confronted five others about their inattention to public safety precautions.
On Monday afternoon, Edmonton resident Albert Nobbs stopped at a Petro Canada station to fill up his car and purchase a beverage, according to CTV News. Once inside, however, he was horrified to see that several people in his vicinity—a man, a boy, and three women—were not wearing masks, which is forbidden in retail establishments by local law.
“I told them, ‘We’ve been doing this for a year, so what the hell?'” Nobbs told CTV News. “At that point, the larger of them came up to me at the cashier and asked me to repeat it, so I did.”
The man then pulled out a phone, which Nobbs knocked out of his hand. That’s when things took a turn for the worse.
“I got a hit to the temple, I went down…like a lead balloon, not exactly proud of it…and then I got hit again, and again, and again,” Nobbs said. In a subsequent Twitter thread, he specified that he received “multiple blows to the head and back from multiple people,” though he believes the man did the bulk of the damage.
Today I was viciously assaulted (multiple blows to the head and back from multiple people) for having the balls to call out someone for anti-masking in an enclosed space.
My pandemic experience is complete. #yeg #abpoli #abcovid
— Albert Nobbs (@Albert_Nobbs) April 5, 2021
To add insult to literal injury, the man proceeded to threaten Nobbs with criminal charges before exiting the store. By the time police arrived around 2:30 p.m., he and his companions had fled the scene. An investigation is currently underway.
“The [ambulance] techs actually thanked me…for saying something,” Nobbs said. “I don’t want to actually have to tell people to take care of other people, or to at least not put them in harm’s way, but we have this environment now where pride and ignorance let you justify anything.”
While Nobbs is expected to make a full recovery, he sustained bruises on his face, arms, and back, plus a “killer headache” and a potentially broken nose, according to the thread. In a photo he uploaded to Twitter, his forehead appears discolored and the tip of his nose bloody.
It’s “definitely gonna be soft food for a couple of days,” he wrote jokingly.
However, he indicated that he would do it all over again if he had to.
“If you’re in a situation where you have the ability to affect change in a positive way, you’re morally obligated to do so,” he said.
