Internet café security guard jailed after defiant customer smacked in the face
Belleview FL April 17 2019
A security guard at a Belleview internet café was jailed last week after a customer claimed he was hit in the face while sitting in his car in the parking lot.
The victim told a Belleview police officer last Tuesday that he was playing games inside the facility, located on S U.S. Hwy. 441, when the security guard, 49-year-old Abraham Anthony Burgess, told him to leave and not come back.
He said he was in the parking lot in his vehicle with the door open, talking to friends, when Burgess reached between the door and the car and smacked him in the face, making his glasses fall off. The victim said he then got out of the vehicle to defend himself and Burgess kept walking toward him “asking him what he was going to do,” a Belleview Police report states, adding that the victim said his glasses and chain necklaces were broken during the altercation.
Burgess told officers that he is an armed security guard at the internet café and the victim “causes him problems” every time he comes to the facility. He said the man is not “respectful” and uses his vape inside when asked not to so. And he said that after asking the victim to leave, he “blew smoke from the vape up in the air,” the report states.
Burgess told officers that he followed the man outside and told him he not to come back. He said he was then hit by spit when the man made a derogatory statement toward him, the report says.
Burgess said he went back inside the internet café but became very angry so went back outside and reached between the door and the vehicle and “smacked the glasses off of the victim.” And he added that the man got out of the vehicle and started “swinging his fist around,” the report says.
After reviewing surveillance footage of the incident, officers arrested Burgess, who lives at 5704 SE 116th St. in Belleview. He was transported to the Marion County Jail and charged with battery and burglary with assault or battery. He was released early Wednesday morning on $26,000 bond.
Ocala News
