Anita Grayson, 75, died after a fight inside a Tim Hortons in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and police say the confrontation began when she went into the shop just after 8 a.m. on May 13 to address an issue she said she had received through the drive-thru.
Surveillance footage released by the Fort Wayne Police Department shows Grayson entering the coffee shop, approaching the counter and berating a 17-year-old female employee. A 20-year-old shift lead stepped in and repeatedly told Grayson to leave, but police said Grayson pushed her and then hit her in the face. The footage shows the shift lead leaping toward Grayson and swinging her arms, and both women fell to the ground. FWPD said Grayson grabbed at the shift lead’s face, knocked off her glasses and pulled out a chunk of her hair before two other Tim Hortons employees separated them. Grayson later sat at a table and talked on a cell phone, then lay down on the floor. The shift lead checked on her and brought her a cup of water.
An officer arrived and found Grayson unresponsive. Medics performed life-saving measures and took her from the scene, but medical personnel later pronounced her dead. Police said they did not initially plan to release the footage, but did so to counter what they called a dangerously false narrative circulating online. The video has turned a fast-moving altercation into a public argument over how a 75-year-old woman died inside a coffee shop and who should be believed about the moments before it happened.
Grayson’s daughter, Tawnda Grayson, said her mother had congestive heart failure and had recently gotten a new heart doctor and was wearing a heart monitor a week before the incident. She said, “My mother was wronged in the worst way,” adding, “I lost the matriarch of my family.” She also said, “You should not enter a coffee shop for a coffee and a doughnut and come out unalive. That is diabolical.” In a separate statement, she said, “That’s the elderly lady. That’s not how we treat our senior citizens...We be careful with them. We make sure that they’re alright. We don’t jump on them and attack them. And scare them to death.”
The case now sits at the intersection of a violent in-store dispute, a death that followed soon after, and a fight over the meaning of the video that police felt compelled to publish. The footage has made one fact clear: the confrontation was physical, it escalated quickly, and it ended with Grayson collapsing inside the Tim Hortons. Read more: Anita Grayson dies after fight at Fort Wayne Tim Hortons, police video shows —
