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Prosecutor: Man claiming to have COVID-19 touched ‘everything’ at Kroger

Johnathan David-Asher Miracle (Photo Provided/Genesee County Jail via WNEM and CNN)

GENESEE TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WNEM) — If a global pandemic isn’t scary enough, Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton says a Mount Morris man, Johnathan David-Asher Miracle, was allegedly attempting to spread COVID-19 when he was asked to leave a Genesee Township Kroger.

“He was showing some signs that he was ill,” Leyton said. “They told him he had to leave and he said, ‘I’m not leaving without my belongings.’ So, the store manager got his belongings and took it out to him.”

Leyton says store employees told police he was walking around the store touching everything.

“He said, ‘I’m positive for COVID-19,’” Leyon said. “They put them in a police car and started licking the windows inside backseat of the car as well as the partition between the backseat in the front seat. It was a bad situation.”

Miracle is charged with harmful substance-personal falsely exposed, malicious destruction of police property, and assaulting, resisting arrest.

Leyton says if it turns out that miracle actually does have COVID-19 his charges will be much more serious.

“We are waiting to see what the testing on him shows,” Leyton said. “In fact, if he has, it will increase the charge to that of domestic terrorism. If he doesn’t have it, we’ll charge him with false report of terrorism.”

Leyton says the results could be in this week and he is taking this matter very seriously.

“Either way he caused unrest in the civilian community,” he said. “Deliberately caused people to feel that they were unsafe.”