Tom Patierno was hiking with a friend on the Rio Grande Trail when a 68-year-old woman asked Patierno to give her some room as they got closer to each other.

After the woman requested he move over, “Patierno came up close to her, got in her face and intentionally coughed in her face,” according to an Aspen Police Department report obtained by The Aspen Times.

The report said the Aspen police officer initially charged Patierno with disorderly conduct for his alleged behavior. However, county records show that Pitkin County Public Health Director Karen Koenemann brought criminal charges against Patierno ten days later for not complying with social distancing requirements.

Koenemann charged Patierno with a misdemeanor for criminally violating the county public health order, which had gone into effect on March 23, six days before the incident. She told the Times she made the decision to bring charges against him because his actions seemed intentional.

“The facts seem to indicate that this was a purposeful act that unfortunately impacted someone who is in a vulnerable population,” Koenemann said Monday. “We are looking at egregious violations and someone purposefully coughing on someone certainly fits that bill.”

Patierno had told officers he had been stressed from losing his job as a result of the pandemic and aggravated by the public’s paranoia about the ongoing global health crisis.

When asked why he approached the woman, Patierno told officers, “I’m just so sick and tired of all these people and their paranoia. They didn’t have to say anything to me. I was in the middle of the trail and there is only so much room,” according to the report.

The police report states that the woman said “she was very frightened by this incident, and was very scared that she would get sick because of it,” but has not tested positive for COVID-19 as of Monday.

However, she told the Times, “had a very scary two weeks though and more than that… I was concerned that someone was feeling this way about the virus and being a threat to the community.”

Older adults over the age of 60 have been known to be at a greater risk of contracting the virus and infections in that population have led to greater rates of hospitalizations and deaths.

Newsweek reached out to Patierno’s attorney for comment but did not hear back before publication.