An Iowa man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for physically attacking another man during a dispute over wearing a face covering correctly in November.
Mark Dinning, the other customer, reportedly exchanged words with Michael before they left the store. He said that Michael followed him to the parking lot and started attacking him.
Dinning maintained that they both fell to the ground and Michael poked him in the eye, to which Dinning responded with a bite to his arm. He said that Michael then kneed him in the groin several times, then pulled down his mask, spitting and coughing on him.
According to Michael, it was Dinning who started the fight by first shoulder-checking him and poking him in the abdomen after they had left the store. He asserted that then they grappled and fell to the ground, during which Michael held Dinning to the ground. When Dinning started biting his arm, he responded by jabbing his finger into Dinning’s eye.
“And so he’s not going to cover his nose and mouth because he can’t breathe,“ Dennis Michael said. ”And there was no mask mandate in place. It was just a request by Vision 4 Less that people wear a mask, and he was.”
The elder Michael believes that the sentence isn’t proportional to the incident.
“It’s like [Dinning] got a black eye in a bar fight, and now, my son is getting 10 years in prison,” he said.
In a Facebook post, Dinning said that as a result of the fight, he almost lost his eye.
