Maureen Waters was window shopping in Piccadilly Arcade when the profanity-laced article of clothing, on sale at Cheep Discount Boutique, caught her eye.
“I passed the shop and saw the word ‘kill’ and thought ‘what is that?’ and doubled back,” Mrs Waters said.
“I just couldn’t believe any retailer would put a T-shirt with that message on it out. I do understand that people have rights and can choose what they buy but I just thought it was so wrong.”
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READ NOW“I was actually shaking – nothing I have seen has affected me as much as that. I think it is because of what is going on in the world at the moment – the stabbings and the murders and people taking up guns.”
Mrs Waters confronted the shop assistant about the T-shirt and said she was told to “get a life.”
After leaving irate, she returned a day later to purchase the top – which she plans to cut up and burn, but not before raising awareness about the fact that such items are on sale in Perth.
“I said to the shop assistant that if I spoke to her inappropriately I apologise but I am not apologising for what I said about the T-shirt.
“I first got it just before Christmas and I’ve sat on it for a while but the other day it just came back into my mind and I thought if it was agitating me so much it was worth saying something about it.”
Daniel Grigg, owner of Cheep Discount Boutique, was resolute in his defence of the T-shirt.
“The world is full of self-righteous, bored, middle-class people trying to tell everybody what is right and wrong,” he said.
“But not everybody is like them – we are all different and some of us don’t want to accept mind control in a life with so much choice.
“Just let kids have fun and if it turns out that a kid kills somebody, then maybe they were always going to kill.
“Cotton, and the words printed on it, never killed.”