Peel police searching for man who spat on Tim Hortons employee in alleged ‘hate-motivated assault’

Warning: Peel Regional Police released video of a hate-motivated assault on a Tim Hortons employee in Mississauga.

Warning: Content in this article may be upsetting or triggering to some readers

Police are searching for a man wanted in connection with an alleged “hate-motivated assault” after he was caught on camera accosting a Mississauga Tim Hortons employee last month.

Newly released video from Peel police shows a man in an orange or red-coloured shirt walk into a Tim Hortons on Lakeshore Road near Lakefront Prominade and wait to place his order.

The video jumps ahead and shows the man grab something unidentifiable off a machine behind the counter and tell the worker to “get out of my face.”

He is then handed what appears to be a coffee by the same worker, at which point he places down the first object he had grabbed and yells “go back to India you cockroach.”

He then leans over and appears to spit at the employee.

In a release on Wednesday, Peel police say the assault happened on July 19 at around 6 a.m.

“The incident escalated when the customer uttered racial and derogatory slurs and spat on her (the employee) before leaving,” police said in the release.

“Fortunately, the victim suffered no lasting physical injuries.”

Police describe the man as white with a heavy build, and say he was wearing a baseball cap with an orange or red shirt with white writing that resembles the ‘Coca-Cola’ logo on it at the time of the assault.

He also had on dark pants and light-coloured shoes, and left the area in a white four-door Ford commercial truck, with a black dump chassis at the back.

Police said investigators are “continuing to track the vehicle on various cameras along its path until the licence plate is visible.”

“Our goal in putting, not only the video out, but some audio to capture this voice and the absolutely repugnant things that he had to say, is that... someone knows who this is,” Peel police Const. Tyler Bell-Morena told CP24 in an interview. “You can see by his behavior and what he was saying, this clearly has ulterior intentions that go beyond just the fact that he’s having some sort of a bad day with this Tim Hortons employee.”

“This is not becoming behavior of an adult, or anyone in Canadian society.”

Anyone with information is asked to contact detectives at 905-453-2121, ext. 6092, or Crime Stoppers anonymously.