WHITE PRIVILEGE: So let me get this straight a man ,😒🤔 white man, walks into a store was asked to put on a mask, REFUSES, STEALS then goes to his car an PULL A HANDGUN and shoots AT the cashier. Watch this part though. THE NEXT DAY POLICE GO TO ARREST HIM! 😒 He SHOOTS HIS AK-47 AT THE POLICE in a shootout and was arrested ALIVE and they say “He…was just not handling the pandemic well.” – Nickole Duncan
When a cigar shop clerk told Adam Zaborowski on Friday he had to wear a mask in the shop, the 35-year-old angrily refused. Instead, he grabbed two stogies, stormed outside — and then pulled a handgun and shot at the clerk, Bethlehem Township, Pa., police said.
The next day, cornered near his home, Zaborowski allegedly fired at police with an AK-47, sparking a wild shootout with at least seven officers that ended with him shot multiple times and under arrest.
The case is the latest violent incident tied to arguments over mandatory mask orders. But Zaborowski’s reaction was driven by his own intense difficulty with the pandemic, his attorney claimed; before the shootout, Zaborowski had lost his job and had also recently lost custody of his child.
“He just wasn’t dealing well with the loss of his job, the loss of his child, just not handling the pandemic well,” John Waldron told the Express-Times on Sunday, while noting those factors didn’t justify his violent conduct. “I think he was getting stretched too tight.”
Tensions around wearing masks have been mounting since early April, when the CDC began recommending face coverings to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. (Video: Monica Akhtar/Photo: Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)
Zaborowski’s alleged rampage started Friday morning at Cigars International in Bethlehem Township, where he adamantly argued he didn’t have to wear a mask, even after a clerk offered to serve him curbside.
“It’s crazy,” said Tom Gallagher, who was shopping in the store at the time. “It’s the mask. The guy was obviously anti-mask.”
After Zaborowski walked out without paying for his cigars, police say he fired his gun once in the air and twice at a clerk who confronted him outside. Multiple customers were also sitting outside the shop in the direction he fired.
The next morning, police and state troopers were waiting to arrest Zaborowski outside his home in Slatington, Pa., when he hopped in a truck and drove off, police told the Express-Times. When they stopped him nearby, he jumped out of the vehicle and started firing at police with the AK-47 and a semiautomatic handgun.
“Both the Slatington Borough officer and troopers returned fire and struck Zaborowski,” State Trooper Nathan Branosky said in a news release.
Zaborowski was hit in the buttocks and leg, Waldron said, and is expected to recover.
“The fact that he got shot twice with non-life-threatening injures when he had an AK-47 and another handgun, Adam is very fortunate he ended up the way he did,” Waldron told the Express-Times.
He is now charged with 22 counts including attempted homicide, aggravated assault and robbery, the Express-Times reported, and is being held on $1 million bail.
