Pastor Tony Spell’s Lawyer Contracts COVID-19 After Attending Packed Services

Chris Graythen/Getty Images


Who would have thought that the biggest asshole to emerge from a global pandemic would be a guy who plans to be a man of God?

Tony Spell, Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s Life Tabernacle Church pastor who looks like if Rick Pitino coached an XFL team (R.I.P.), is one of the most dangerous people in America right now.

A week ago, the smug pastor was arrested for violating the state government’s stay-at-home order by holding his weekly masses as scheduled. The arrest didn’t shake Spell, who held two more masses, congregating thousands of people in a state with the fifth most COVID-19 deaths in the country.

Spell now-infamously said that his parishioners are true Christians who wouldn’t mind dying from the virus because they’d be doing so in the name of God and freedom. In the year 2020.

[Related: Tony Spell Is Challenging People To Donate Their Stimulus Checks To Churches]

TMZ is now reporting that Spell’s lawyer, Jeff Wittenbrink, has pneumonia in both lungs and is hooked up to oxygen after contracting COVID-19 after attending two services at Pastor Spell’s Life Tabernacle Church, on April 2 and April 5.

Jeff Wittenbrink tells TMZ he was admitted Tuesday to Baton Rouge Medical Center with the virus after his condition worsened over the weekend. In addition to pneumonia, he’s battling a high fever and persistent cough.

…He tells us he shook hands with the controversial pastor that day, but added Spell sanitized his hands immediately afterward. Wittenbrink says Spell does that after he shakes hands with everyone.

Bafflingly, Wittenbrink does not think he contracted the virus packed like sardines in a pew with thousands of strangers, but he thinks he “picked it up the previous week while doing his daily business and going to drug stores, grocery stores and hardware stores.”

That Kool-Aid Pastor Spell’s handing out must be goddamn delicious.

[h/t TMZ]

 

 

Matt Keohan Avatar
Matt’s love of writing was born during a sixth grade assembly when it was announced that his essay titled “Why Drugs Are Bad” had taken first prize in D.A.R.E.’s grade-wide contest. The anti-drug people gave him a $50 savings bond for his brave contribution to crime-fighting, and upon the bond’s maturity 10 years later, he used it to buy his very first bag of marijuana.