The incident happened back at the end of December at Joe’s Bar and Grill in Seattle. Bartender Felicite Ogilvy was given the job of checking people’s vaccination cards which was mandated at the time:

“I asked him, ‘do you have your vaccination card?’ and he said ‘I’ve had the vaccine but I don’t have the card’ and I was like OK but you need to have proof of it,” Ogilvy said…

“He ended up basically saying ‘You’re picking on me,'” Ogilvy said. “I’m not going to deal with it.’ That’s when he started getting hostile.”

A coworker came over to help defuse the escalating situation – and even a few customers – but the man wouldn’t go and fought back with a long stick. Witnesses said a sharp piece of metal was attached to the bottom end.

“He swung the stick as hard as he could at my face, so not only did it puncture me, he also slit me,” Ogilvy said.

The wound was so deep Ogilvy needed 31 stitches to close it up.

Here’s a bit of the surveillance video of the argument leading up to the attack.

Tonight on @fox13seattle A seattle bartender attacked for asking for proof of vax. Hear how she hopes the community can help her. pic.twitter.com/mgG0A3HnRp

— AJ Janavel (@ajjanavelnews) December 31, 2021

The man quickly fled the scene. A couple of people from the bar tried to follow him but he managed to get on a commuter train and disappear. It took police six weeks to identify and arrest him. At his first court appearance last week, prosecutors said they were charging him with felony assault and asked for $75,000 bail. But the judge ignored that and released him with a promise he’d return for his next court date and a no-contact order for Ogilvy.

“We realized pretty clearly that this is a felony assault case and we charged it that way,” said Casey McNerthney, a spokesperson for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. “We understand that the victim was concerned. We were too. That’s why we wanted him to be held in jail.”

Ogilvy has undergone surgery and is scheduled for more to help heal the wound that initially required 31 sutures to close up.

The judge did impose a no-contact order on Echols but Ogilvy said it brings her little comfort.

“I don’t feel safe and I don’t feel safe with our justice system, with just letting them out immediately,” she said.

I guess the judge is a fan of bail reform. Will this guy return to face jail time or will he just vanish?

The twist here is that Felicity Ogilvy didn’t agree with the vax card mandate in the first place and wasn’t happy about being made to check vax cards. “Why am I the one who has to control this?” she said back when the attack happened. Yesterday she added, “I’m upset over this whole situation because if we weren’t required with the vaccine to ask about about their card or to even have to look at it, this wouldn’t have happened.”

This isn’t the only incident like this in Seattle. This week another man was arrested for threatening an Applebees bartender with a meat cleaver:

Investigators say Michael Dousa, 58, lunged at an Applebee’s bartender with a meat cleaver after he was asked to leave the Bellevue restaurant when he couldn’t provide proof of vaccination.

Detectives say when Dousa got outside the restaurant he was yelling and waving the knife around and when the bartender asked him to leave, police say Dousa went after him with the raised cleaver over his head.

I get that everyone is sick of this crap but the bartender isn’t to blame. These are just people trying to keep his business from being shut down over a county mandate they may never have agreed with in the first place. The good news is that King County has announced the requirement to check vax cards will finally come to an end on March 1.