Two Women Charged With Affray After Toilet Roll Fight In Australian Supermarket
A mum and daughter accused of scrapping with another shopper have said that they were simply trying to protect the jumbo pack of toilet roll that they’d managed to grab.
Have a look at the video to jog your memory.
60-year-old Treiza Bebawy and her 23-year-old daughter Meriam, were charged by the Australian police after footage of their alleged fight with a third person in a Woolworths supermarket in south-western Sydney went viral.
The pair seemed to be angered by the attempts of the victim, a 49-year-old woman, to also grab her share of bog roll during what appears to be a panic buying session in the early hours of March 7.
After an unseemly confrontation, during which hair was pulled and plenty of screaming ensued, the woman shouted at the Bebawy women: “I just wanted one pack!”.
All the while, the older Bebawy can be seen shielding away a trolley that is full of loo paper.
Towards the end of the action, a worker from the shop can be heard pouring some common sense onto the situation, telling the participants: “You are fighting over tissues. Think about what you’re doing, yeah?”
This was just one incident in a spate of panic buying problems encountered by police around a month ago in Australia.
At the time, New South Wales Police Inspector Andrew New said: “We just ask that people don’t panic like this when they go out shopping.
“There is no need for it. It isn’t the Thunderdome, it isn’t Mad Max, we don’t need to do that.”
In this instance, the victim escaped unhurt, and the two Bebawy family members handed themselves into a police station, covering their faces amidst a throng of TV cameras.
They’ve been charged with affray, which is a serious offence that has a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison.
Under the Aussie Crimes Act, affray is when a person has ‘used or threatened’ violence, and their behaviour ‘is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his or her personal safety’.
In this case, the act adds: “If two or more persons use or threaten the unlawful violence, it is the conduct of them taken together that must be considered.”
The two women will appear in court to face their charges on April 28.
This was by no means an isolated incident, however. On March 4, police were called to another incident in Parramatta that saw someone allegedly brandishing a knife at another shopper.
The very next day, a 50-year-old was tasered after grabbing a woman’s throat in an argument over toilet roll.
