Man leaving bar punched panhandler, was chased with shovel in uptown, CMPD says
A man who punched a man because he was asking for money in uptown Charlotte on Saturday afternoon ended up being chased with a shovel. Now both are facing criminal charges, according to police.
The fight, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officials, started on North Tryon Street when a man — who’d been drinking — confronted a man who was panhandling for money and punched him. The fight then escalated when the man who was panhandling began chasing the other man with a shovel he’d picked up from a nearby construction site in front of The Capital Grille.
Police did not release the names of the two men on Monday.
At least one dozen people witnessed the incident and many could be seen in one video, posted on Twitter, standing nearby to capture the fight on their phones. CMPD spokesman Tom Hildebrand said that the 30-second video “makes this look one-sided” and that during the fight, “both of the suspects used objects to physically assault each other.”
Part of the fight was recorded by a 32-year-old bystander, Ryan Seery, who posted the video online. Seery, who works in uptown as a catering manager, said he’s seen the man panhandle often in uptown and has seen him get into verbal fights before.
“This is the only time I’ve seen it escalated to physical violence,” Seery told the Observer in an interview.
Just moments before he started recording Saturday, Seery says, the fight seemed to have ended. The man who first threw punches had tackled the man who was asking for money and appeared to be holding him to the ground until police arrived, according to Seery. But the man was able to escape and then he grabbed a shovel, Seery said.
Although the man who was panhandling was not the “initial aggressor,” his action of using a shovel during the fight went “well beyond reasonable self-defense,” Hildebrand said in a statement Monday.
Investigators believe the fight started when the man, exiting a bar, took issue with the way the other man asked two women for money on the street, Hildebrand said.
“In the end, both parties willingly participated in this fight and they each had opportunities to walk away,” Hildebrand said.
Hildebrand said when officers initially responded to the fight Saturday, no one was injured and neither man wanted to press charges. However, after reviewing surveillance video footage and speaking to both men, police took the case to a magistrate.
The magistrate then issued a civil summons against both men, Hildebrand said. Both men are expected to appear in court under the summons to face charges of misdemeanor assault with a deadly weapon and fighting in public.
This story was originally published March 9, 2020 at 3:57 PM.
