This is the shocking moment a woman started lunging at shop workers and customers before being bundled to the floor after a brawl broke out in a supermarket over social distancing rules.
Dramatic video captured the violence erupting inside the store in the Lozells area of Birmingham after the woman allegedly mistook one customer for a staff member.
She was said to have become angry at the man for failing to follow social distancing measures at the New Medina Superstore on Easter Sunday.
The woman allegedly shouted at the shop owner of the New Medina Store on Lozells Road in Birmingham
In the video, the woman can be heard asking the store owner: ‘Do you own this shop? Why do you have a worker like that?’
She starts lunging at several men who quickly surround her and become involved in the scuffle as another person starts shouting: ‘He is a customer. He is a customer.’
A group of men start to shove her towards the door as bystanders look on bemused at what is happening as products are strewn across the aisles.
The woman is apparently wrestled to the floor by the men in the busy shop.
A man in a red top then intervenes, telling the men: ‘There were five of you on a woman. Just calm down, calm down.’
The owner responds: ‘She smashed up my shop. I haven’t done anything wrong. It was all her.’
Five men pounced on the woman after she allegedly continued to behave aggressively
A worker at the Medina Superstore, who did not want to be named, said tempers flared after the woman became irate at a man flouting social distancing rules.
The store can be seen full of customers, despite government advice to remain 6ft (2m) apart, while only a few people are wearing masks or protective equipment.
The employee said: ‘It was an issue between two customers. It all started over the social distancing protocols. The male customer was standing in her way, talking to another person. He was basically blocking her path.
‘The woman started shouting about social distancing and got angry. She actually then left the store but then came back because she thought he was a worker.
A man in a red top was seen to come to the woman’s defence as he says: ‘There’s five of you and she’s a woman’
‘That’s why you can hear someone say he’s a customer. He’s nothing to do with us. I think she really got angry when she saw someone recording.
‘She did apologise later, on the phone. She is actually a regular customer with us. This is something that happens sometimes. But we are a genuine business.
‘We’ve got a Post Office too and we could have had 90 per cent of our salary paid by closing due to the coronavirus outbreak.
‘However, we thought that we are the only Post Office open and NHS staff, older people and people who don’t have anybody rely on us. If we close, what are they going to do?
‘We’re genuine people, but when somebody starts throwing punches and starts chucking stuff off the shelves, damaging property, we’re not gonna allow that.
‘With social distancing, people are getting easily offended. She’s not a small woman, she’s actually quite big, so when she got violent we had to get her out of the shop and keep people safe.
‘It was not a her and us kind of mentality. That’s not right. We serve all kinds of people.’
A customer told MailOnline that the argument broke out when he bumped into his cousin and stopped to chat with her. He said they were talking at a sensible distance but the woman muttered as she passed them.
The man, who did not want to be named, claimed the woman became aggressive when he responded to her.
He said: ‘She’s been talking about distancing and is now in my face.’
He said she punched him on the side of his face and he ‘smacked her back’ at which point she dropped her phone.
He said she left but then returned, claiming her phone was broken.
West Midlands Police said: ‘We are investigating after a woman was assaulted by a group of men at a shop on Lozells Road, Lozells at 2.30pm on Sunday (12 April) after it is alleged she confronted one of them about social distancing.
‘Fortunately she was not seriously injured.
‘Anyone with information can contact us via Live Chat at west-midlands.police.uk between 8am and midnight, call 101 anytime or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. Please quote crime reference number 20BW/88306D/20.’