Authorities have charged a man accused of licking deodorants in a Walmart store in Missouri during the coronavirus outbreak for making a terroristic threat.
Authorities charged Cody Lee Pfister, 26, after they found what they said was a video of a man licking the items in the Walmart store.
A video posted on social media shows a man saying to the camera, “Who’s scared of the coronavirus? Don’t touch your mouth” before licking the line of deodorants on the store shelf.
The City of Warrenton, Missouri’s, Police Department released a statement Monday that said “a local resident who took a video of themselves licking the merchandise after making a ‘Corona Virus’ statement at Walmart and posting it to social media has been taken into custody.”
The Warren County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office then charged Pfister with making a terrorist threat in the second degree, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
If he is convicted of the charge, it is a class E felony that comes with a four-year prison sentence and a fine.
Pfister is due back in court for a hearing on Wednesday.
The Warrington Police Department said it received complaints from around the world about the video, including people from “the Netherlands, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.”
“We take these complaints very seriously and would like to thank all of those who reported the video so the issue could be addressed,” the department wrote on Facebook.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that the coronavirus could stay on surfaces for days and weeks, meaning that people could catch the coronavirus by touching an item that an infected person has touched.