Fort Wayne police have released surveillance video showing an elderly woman fighting with a Tim Hortons employee shortly before she died last week, drawing fresh scrutiny to an encounter that began over a drive-thru order and ended with a 75-year-old customer found unresponsive on the floor.
Police said Anita Ann Grayson went into the restaurant on Ice Way about 8 a.m. to complain about her order and then berated a teenage worker. A 20-year-old shift lead stepped between them and told Grayson to leave, according to investigators. Police said an older employee tried to block Grayson from getting to the teen, and Grayson forcefully shoved the worker backward and struck her in the face. The worker moved toward Grayson and swung her arms in an attempt to strike her, police said, before Grayson scratched the employee’s face, knocked off her glasses and pulled out a chunk of her hair.
About 10 minutes later, police said, Grayson laid down on the floor. The shift lead noticed her there and brought her a cup of water, and another employee also checked on her. A responding officer arrived and found Grayson unresponsive. Medics started life-saving measures, took her from the scene and she was later pronounced dead.
The release of the video and the police narrative put the sequence of events under public examination while the Allen County Coroner’s Office has not yet ruled on the cause and manner of death. Preliminary findings showed there were no significant contributory injuries, police said, but that has not settled the dispute over what happened inside the restaurant or what role, if any, the altercation played in Grayson’s death.
That uncertainty has become part of the fight around the case. Family members say Grayson died after the confrontation at the Tim Hortons on Ice Way, and her daughter, Tawnda Grayson, has pushed back hard against the police account. “My mother was wronged in the worst way,” she said, adding, “I lost the matriarch of my family.” She said her mother had congestive heart failure and had just gotten a new heart doctor and was wearing a heart monitor a week before the altercation.
In a statement, Tim Hortons said it was deeply saddened by the incident and sent condolences to Grayson’s loved ones, adding that the local franchisee had been cooperating fully with police. Fort Wayne police, meanwhile, urged the public to wait for the full review, saying people should “allow the review process to proceed based on the full body of evidence, not incomplete video clips or inaccurate narratives.”
For Grayson’s family, the video has only deepened the grief. Tawnda Grayson said, “You should not enter a coffee shop for a coffee and a doughnut and come out unalived.” She called the episode “diabolical” and said, “That’s the elderly lady. That’s not how we treat our senior citizens.” The coroner’s ruling now carries the most weight, because it is the step that can answer the central question left unresolved by the video: how a customer who walked into a coffee shop over an order was dead before the morning was over.
