An employee of the Red Bank Foodtown wound up in jail after a fist-swinging episode at the store’s customer service desk Saturday afternoon, police said.
Store employee Charles Bennett, 56, of Ambassador Drive, first assaulted a management-level employee and then took on police officers in full view of shoppers, Chief Darren McConnell tells redbankgreen.
Police responded to the supermarket, on Broad Street, at about 3:30 following a report that Bennett was assaulting another man in one of the store’s aisles.
Bennett was said by witnesses to have gone to the customer service desk demanding to see the manager, McConnell said. The nature of Bennett’s gripe was unknown, he said.
“He got into a verbal altercation, which escalated into a physical altercation,” McConnell said. “By all accounts, Bennett was the aggressor and the other employee was the victim.”
In the process, the manager, whose identity was not released, got punched in the face and suffered a knee injury that required a trip to the emergency room at Riverview Medical Center, said McConnell.
By the time police arrived, the assault was over, but when they attempted to take Bennett into custody, “he resisted fairly violently, knocking over food shelves in the process,” McConnell said.
Bennett was eventually subdued and charged with simple assault, resisting arrest, obstructing justice and disorderly behavior.
Judge William Himelman set bail at $6,500. Bennett was still behind bars at the Monmouth County Correctional Institution Tuesday morning, according to the county sheriff’s department website.
