Saanich police, British Columbia, investigate a violent confrontation between an older man and a teenager in a Tim Hortons who was captured in a viral video.
In the short clip, the man can be seen launching the teenager for several people before another man seems to break the confrontation. Then a third man intervenes and slaps young people.
The incident, which occurred on the site of the Saanich Plaza of the coffee chain, has since been seen millions of times.
Isaac Campbell, who recorded the video, said that the teenager had triggered the incident when he launched an object that hit the older man’s wife.
The teenager, he said, “threw food everywhere”.
“I whip a chocolate bar on my head, it whistles just by my head … So I turned around like a 14 -year -old child standing there. He is 14 years old, I’m not going to do anything, so I just gave him a stinking eye. And then I heard an old man start shouting.
“In the video, you can see that the old man has just jumped on him, started punching him. (The fight) broke quite quickly. People started to cry … And then another guy went up. He heard what happened and I suppose he also wanted to punch, so he just hit the kid.”
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Campbell said that he was told later that the article that struck the woman was a sponge of beauty mixer, not food.
Saanich Police Insp. Damian Kowalewich said the incident would have occurred at the end of April, but was only reported recently.
He said the investigators had spoken to one of the people involved, but were still trying to determine all the facts.
“The video itself shows a very short extract of what was probably a bigger event in the coffee,” he said.
“We know that this video has become viral, we know that there are millions of views, and comments and speculation about what happened. The truth is, at the moment, we do not know what has led to what happened.”
Regardless of what happened, Kowalewich said the police never approve of violence or taking matters into their own hands.
“People who take matters into their own hands can face consequences,” he said. “That being said, looking at what led to this could also have its own consequences.”
Campbell, on the other hand, said that it was not surprised that the video aroused as much attention online.
“I have the impression that it has all the attributes for a viral video, roughly like a moment …” talk about shit, slaps “,” he said. “You know, when you see an old man doing something like that is ordinary enough.”
The elderly man and his wife, added Campbell, left the restaurant immediately after the incident.
“I saw afterwards, the old man came out, (he) linked his wife’s arms to arms, and it was a moment sick for both, I must say,” he said.
“He was roughly just stuck for his wife and came out of there. She was probably quite happy that evening.”
& Copy 2025 Global News, A Division of Corus Entertainment Inc.