An eyewitness and local news outlets say a man assaulted three police officers in Arlington, Va. Tuesday night, causing them to go to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and shutting down a main traffic thoroughfare.

Roman Jaleta, the assistant manager of the Virginia ABC on the 2900 block of Columbia Pike, says the incident began when a drunk customer staggered into her store and demanded she sell him miniature bottles of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky.

“I said, ‘Sir, you already got enough,'” Jaleta told DCist/WAMU. “‘Sorry, I cannot sell it to you.'”

Jaleta says the man exploded in anger and began swearing at her and intimidating other customers by blocking their path and trying to start a fight with one of them. Jaleta, who is Ethiopian, says the intoxicated customer confronted her in her native Amharic as he demanded she sell him alcohol. She called the police, she says, and they arrived “like angels.”

“If the police is not coming, if he had some gun, he’s going to finish us today,” Jaleta says. “The way he was screaming, the way he was running inside the store, it was terrible.”

An Arlington County Police Department spokesperson did not respond to DCist/WAMU’s phone calls or email.

Ashley Savage, a spokesperson for the ACPD, told ARLNow that police were dispatched to a business on Columbia Pike at about 6:25 p.m.

“Arriving officers made contact with the suspect, who was combative and assaulted three officers,” Savage said, according to ARLNow.

Savage said the officers were transported with non-life-threatening injuries to an area hospital, and that police caught the suspect and took him to a local hospital for evaluation.

Just after 6:45 p.m., a Twitter account that provides alerts from Arlington emergency services reported that eastbound traffic on Columbia Pike was blocked. ARLNow reported nearly a dozen police vehicles and two ambulances showed up on traffic cameras.

By 8 p.m., Jaleta says, the roads were clear.

“I worked for a long time for ABC. I’ve never seen this kind of incident,” Jaleta says.