Man charged after coughing toward store customers

CUBA, Mo. (AP) — An eastern Missouri man was charged with making a terrorist threat after he allegedly coughed toward customers and wrote COVID on a cooler at a Dollar Tree store.

John Swaller, 33, of Cuba, was charged Tuesday and was being held on $25,000 bail in the Crawford County jail.

An employee of a the store in Cuba called police because the man was intentionally coughing toward customers and had breathed on a cooler before writing COVID on the inside of the cooler, police said.

The store was closed and sanitized.