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Restaurant Owner and Teenage Daughter Beaten by Grown ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ Customers.
By: Patrick Maguire
Book Chapter: Customer Hall of Shame
Posted: 06/25/2017
Subhuman. According to Merriam Webster, “subhuman” is defined as “less than human: such as (a) failing to attain the level (as of morality or intelligence) associated with normal human beings.” There aren’t too many other ways to describe the despicable couple who wantonly attacked a Qwik Chik restaurant owner and her 15-yr-old daughter in Baxley, Georgia on Thursday, 6/22, according to ABC WJCJ22. As the disturbing video within the piece by reporter, Tori Simkovic proves, the female customer physically attacks and beats the restaurant owner, then her husband sucker punches the owner’s 15-year-old daughter in the face on the way to fleeing the scene. The teenager easily could have died of a punch from the ‘man’ almost twice her size, especially if she hit her head after the horrific blow. Miraculously, she jumped up immediately to come to the aid of her mom who suffered a broken nose during the beating.
According to this piece filed by Vince Cestone of KRONE 4 TV:
The owner of a Qwik Chick restaurant … says the incident happened Thursday. A couple went to her stand and complained about their food being cold. After a few minutes back and forth, the owner says she refunded their money, but then she says the couple went crazy. They started cussing and beating down the window. The owner went outside to tell them police were on the way when the woman started punching and slapping her in the face. That’s when her daughter got out of the truck to help, and the husband punched the teen right in the face.
“The camera surveillance footage that we put out tells it all. That’s just brutality,” Baxley Police Chief James Godfrey said.
In the WTOC report: “I’ve been here, what, 41 years – 30 of them as chief. I have never seen anything like this. I’ve never heard of anything like this,” said Chief James Godfrey.
From the WJCJ22 piece: Mom/Restaurant owner, “When you see your child hit, by some grown man and she’s only 15, nobody deserves that.” The owner said that the customers came to the restaurant often, but had recently started becoming agitated in recent visits. This attack has made her question if she wants to continue working in the restaurant business. “Do I want to put myself, my employees, or my child at risk just over food? That’s so stupid. So senseless.”
When I spoke with the owner of the restaurant on Saturday afternoon (6/24) just before 4pm, police had not made any arrests, but were following several leads. The owner acknowledged receipt of my PM to the Qwik Chik facebook page, and I agreed to email her the same messages I posted there to make it easier for her to reply.
PM (Patrick Maguire): Reporter, Tori Simkovic from WJCL22 stated in her piece that the attackers came into the restaurant often, “but had started becoming agitated in recent visits.” Is that true?
Owner: Yes, they were irritated for the lat 5 or 6 visits, per my employees.
PM: And if yes, why were they agitated?
Owner: One example was ordering a large drink and then hollering at them when my employee brought the drinks back saying that they said they wanted a jumbo. Stuff like that…
PM: Did you say or do anything to upset them?
Owner: They said that the chicken was cold which it was not. It wasn’t right out of the grease hot, but certainly not cold. They were already irritated by the time I stepped in. I know they had already irritated my employee.
PM: In retrospect, would you have handled your previous interactions with them any differently?
Owner: Not really because there was no reasoning with them.
PM: Would you have handled your interaction with them the day of the incident any differently?
Owner: Probably not.
PM: Why is the video dated 2010?
Owner: Because our business had recently been hit by lightening and had some of the equipment replaced and the tech forgot to set the time and date. I had noticed the time was off, but had not looked at the date.
Ironically, this picture from 10/9/15, is one of the few pics on the Qwik Chik facebook page:
The caption under the pic from the owner of Qwik Chick reads, “You never know what someone is going thru. We deal with this everyday and try our best to be nice. Sometimes it’s better to just walk away and not be ugly!!!” Amen.
Based on my research of the restaurant (reviews, social media, Google search) and conversation with the owner, I cannot envision a scenario where the owner and her daughter deserved anything close to the brutal assaults they endured.
I left the following PM on the dormant facebook page of the male attacker:
I am writing a blog post about your attack on the owner of Qwik Chik and her daughter. Contact me if you’d like to make a statement. [No response as of 1:33pm on 6/25/17.]
When I called the Baxley, GA police dept (912-367-8305) at 1:11pm on Sunday, outgoing VM indicated “office hours” are M-F 8am-5pm. I suppose one could call 911 if they had a hot lead on the thug/attackers…
Please watch the video before commenting below. And if you don’t want to feel worse about ‘humanity’ and the world we live in than you do after watching the video, don’t read the comments following the related stories and social media posts. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World…
Updates will be noted here as they are received.
6/26/17 9am: I received a call from the Baxley PD. They’re following several leads, but no arrests yet.
7/4/17 approx. 12:30pm. Facebook message from Qwk Chik owner:
Hello everyone. Just wanted to take a moment and tell you that you have no ideal how much your phone calls, messages, cards, gifts, donations and encouraging words have meant to me and my family. You would never think that something like this would happen in our town but it did and it’s getting worse all over the world. It is nice to live in a little town where everyone steps up and helps anyone in need. Again Thank You for everything. Please keep your eyes open for these two so we can get them where they belong. Happy Fourth of July and God bless our nation and keep us safe.
July 5th. Attackers surrender.
2 Responses to “Restaurant Owner and Teenage Daughter Beaten by Grown ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ Customers.”
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Permalink | Posted in Customer Hall of Shame | 2 Comments »
God only knows what set this couple off, but there’s no excuse for their obscene behavior. We can only hope that the couple will be brought to justice, and perhaps made to go into anger management and possibly substance abuse therapy. I can understand her trauma, but I hope it won’t discourage the owner from moving forward with her business. To be successful, she must have lots of good and loyal customers, and hopefully community support.
What is it about people and food and restaurants?!! But for the inevitable Black Friday melees, and sale shoppers scrapping at Wal-Mart, no other retail outlets (besides convenience stores) report as much in-store violence as restaurants. And it happens in places where you’d not think that kind of thing would go on.
There’s nothing that the victims here could really have done to anticipate the violence which was visited upon them.
It is my sincere hope that the perpetrator is found, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
It deeply concerns me that these wonderful, friendly restaurateurs are now, perhaps, going to be anxious about going to their place of work. I hope that their colleagues, friends and customers surround them with love and appreciation.
Thanks, Patrick, for exposing the lurid underbelly of the restaurant demographic yet again. Thank God that they are in the minority by far; it’s our regulars that make this biz worth being in!