Gym Owner Facing $1.2 Million In Fines After Refusing Lockdown Rules
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A gym owner in New Jersey is facing up to $1.2 million in fines for refusing to close his business during lockdown.
Ian Smith, co-owner of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, recently shared the news of his hefty fines for keeping the gym open to the public and not enforcing any of Governor Phil Murphy’s pandemic-related rules.
The gym has since been slapped with the fines from Murphy, as well as the owners reportedly having their business license revoked.
The fines will reportedly continue to go up $15,000 each day for as long as Atilis Gym keeps its doors open, TMZ reports.
However, despite the fines and reported arrests Smith and his colleagues have endured, they don’t plan on closing up shop any time soon.
An Instagram post shared last month on the gym’s page read, ‘I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Atilis Gym Bellmawr ain’t shutting down when Murphy brings the second lockdown’.
Smith shared a video to his personal Instagram page on Saturday, December 14, where he could be seen holding up several signs to the camera with one reading, ‘Today we will pass over 84,000 visits to our facility’.
Other signs he held up read, ‘We don’t mandate masks. We never will’, and ‘No science. No shutdown’.
Along with the video, Smith wrote:
We have been open against unconstitutional shut down orders since May. Not once have we flinched, and the petty tyrant of New Jersey governor Murphy has tried everything he could possibly think of to ruin us. Over seven months later we still open our doors every single day.
He continued, ‘No government official will ever tell me that I am not able to provide for my family. I do not answer to public servants – no matter what threats or punishments they impose. I am a free man. I do not ask for permission. I do not ask for forgiveness. You work for us. The only way you’ll ever close these doors is when you close my casket’.
Meanwhile, Governor Murphy is continuing to emphasise the seriousness of the pandemic, and encouraging people to follow social distancing and facemask rules.
Today, December 14, he tweeted the state’s death toll writing, ‘Sadly, we’ve lost another 25 fellow New Jerseyans to #COVID19. We’ve now lost 15,907 New Jerseyans, with another 1,868 counted probable deaths’.
It’s okay to not panic about everything going on in the world right now. LADbible and UNILAD’s aim with our campaign, Cutting Through, is to provide our community with facts and stories from the people who are either qualified to comment or have experienced first-hand the situation we’re facing. For more information from the World Health Organization, click here.
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