Beacon grocery settles suit two years after assault
The owners of the Key Food grocery store on Main Street in Beacon paid $95,000 earlier this month to settle a civil suit stemming from an assault in the store two years ago.
Alvin C. Medina Jr., of Beacon, filed a lawsuit in March 2020 naming Key Food manager Moufaq “Mo” Dabashi and his brother, Emad Dabashi, after Emad Dabashi slammed Medina to the floor inside the store following a confrontation.
The assault, which was captured in security camera footage and recently posted by Medina on social media, came about two hours after employees called Beacon police to the store when Medina began cursing loudly and threatened Emad Dabashi, who was an employee at the time.
According to court documents, Medina and his mother entered the store around 3:15 p.m. on March 2, 2020. While his mother waited in a checkout line, Medina walked to the deli counter, where Emad Dabashi was working. Medina asked if Dabashi would mix two premade salads in one container.
Dabashi said he could not, because the salads were priced differently. Medina responded with a vulgarity and made an obscene gesture before walking away, according to court documents.
Dabashi followed Medina to the checkout line and told him to leave the store. Medina continued shouting, cursing and “muttering to himself” that he was going to punch Dabashi, court documents said.
The police were called to the store, but, according to the incident report, Medina left before officers arrived. Medina returned to the store alone shortly after 5 p.m. the same day. Before returning, according to court documents, he drank at least one bottle of beer and took prescription medication for depression and high blood pressure.
Inside, Medina walked to the dairy aisle and picked up a half-gallon of milk. Upon seeing him, Emad Dabashi told him that he was not allowed in the store. “I don’t want you here,” he said.
Medina ignored Dabashi and walked past him, keeping his left hand in his coat pocket, which Mo Dabashi and Emad Dabashi later said in depositions led them to believe Medina may have been carrying a weapon.
A 20-second clip from the security video shows Mo Dabashi attempting to take the milk jug from Medina, who responds by throwing it on the floor, where it burst open. Emad Dabashi, who was walking behind Medina, immediately picked him up and slammed him, face-first, to the floor, where he lay motionless.
Key Food employees called the Beacon police again. According to the incident report, Medina suffered a cut around his eyebrow. The officers attempted to question him, but “had a difficult time understanding [him] due to his speech and appearing to be under the influence of alcohol.”
The Beacon Volunteer Ambulance Corps took Medina to Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in Newburgh to have his eyebrow stitched.
Asked by officers if they wanted to press charges against Medina, the brothers declined. But Emad, 26 at the time, was arrested and charged with second-degree assault. He pleaded guilty to third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to three years of probation. He said in a deposition that he acted in self-defense but conceded that, based on the video, “everyone doesn’t see it that way.”
Medina’s lawsuit, filed four days later, alleged that Key Food, the parent company, and Alameda Meat Corp., the franchise that owns the Beacon store, failed to properly train and supervise its workers. The attack left Medina with “serious, severe and permanent personal injuries, causing him to become and remain sick, sore, lame and disabled, causing him great pain and agony” and “preventing him from enjoying the normal fruits of his activities,” it said.
A hearing had been scheduled in Dutchess County Supreme Court for this week before the settlement was reached.
Junior Dabashi, one of the store owners and Mo and Emad Dabashi’s brother, said on Wednesday (March 23) that the incident was out of character for his family.
“What my brother did was wrong,” he said. “But it happened because of all the other problems we’d had all day with [Medina]. We don’t have these problems [normally]. We respect every single person. We’re here for everybody.”
The settlement was paid by Alameda’s insurance company, he said.
Everything about this is wrong. The customer was causing problems at the business, not once, but several times. He appeared to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He kept his hand in his pocket, suggesting a weapon.
I feel what the worker did was warranted, if the article represents the facts. I would have done the same. The sad part is that the employee got arrested when the offender should have been. The company paid out. This is what they do to avoid further litigation and fees; I understand that. But it does not make it right. To reward this kind of behavior is wrong on so many levels.
The video shows the customer carrying the half-gallon of milk, hemmed in by both Dabashi brothers in what appears to be a tight situation. It appears they are threatening him and he has no means of egress. The store employee from the other side of the aisle doesn’t miss a beat, finishing his drink before stepping over the injured Medina. Curiously, most of what is reported about Medina is from interviews with the Dabashis and police reports. Why wasn’t Medina interviewed for the story?
We didn’t interview Medina or Emad Dabashi or Moufaq Dabashi. Instead, we relied on hundreds of pages of court documents, including Medina’s complaint and depositions given by both brothers, the Beacon police report and an interview with Junior Dabashi, who is a co-owner of the store.
Your article on the incident at Key Food is the most insensitive piece of reporting I have ever read. At first, I was extremely disappointed your choice of photo used, which was misleading visually and when identifying the roles people played in the incident. But after I read the 475 pages of the court documents, I see now which details and quotes you left out, which makes this photo and article even worse. As a local blogger and columnist who thinks a lot about finding or making appropriate pictures to pair with words in an article, I am extremely disappointed in the photo you created and printed on the front page of the newspaper telling of how the verbally abusive and banned customer named Alvin C. Medina at Key Food trespassed back into the store after consuming at least one beer and two different medications, pushed passed employees, exploded a carton of milk and was subdued to the ground by an employee, Emad Dabashi, who then went to escort Beacon police to Alvin, since the police had already been called the moment Alvin walked into the store. The photo showed Alvin face down on the floor of the dairy section, surrounded by three men standing above him, and red around Alvin’s neck and the floor. In your weekly newsletter sent to members of this free newspaper, you included a “warning” for two photos in the paper: this photo of the man, and a historic photo of a building being demolished.… Read more »
Subdued is probably not the right word for what happened. The red near Medina’s head looked like a baseball cap to me (which it was), but my point in an email to Martin was that the presence of blood makes no difference in whether an assault occurred. According to the police report, Medina had left by the time Beacon officers arrived; they didn’t “let him walk right by.” There are a great many details not included in the caption, which is why we also printed a story. When someone sues for damages, they typically name the employer or parent corporation, because that’s where the money is, and whoever is suing will make the argument that an employer is responsible for the actions of its employees, as stated in the article. In this case, Emad Dabashi was an employee of a company and the company is a franchise of a larger corporation. That’s hardly unusual and the story noted that the store owner’s insurance company paid the settlement. Medina did not file four separate lawsuits. A still image very similar to what we printed was included in the lengthy court record, which Martin knows, since I shared the court record at her request after she submitted a letter to the editor that contained accusations that were not supported by the evidence in the case. I also answered by email her questions about our coverage and suggested she cover the story herself in her blog if she felt ours was inadequate. Medina’s… Read more »
Everyone frames a story. Everyone is human. Reporters and editors are human. How we interpret what we see and read frames how we are gong to tell what we just saw. What I said in my letter is true. I will pull quotes to serve as the facts in my response to you: “Subdued is probably not the right word for what happened.” The word “Subdued” was used 7 times in the court documents you sent me, that you said you reported from. Five of those times it was used in reference to Alvin Medina being brought to the floor. Two of those times where in reference to Medina’s attorney asking Emad if Medina was himself in a more subdued state the 2nd time he returned to the store. “According to the police report, Medina had left by the time Beacon officers arrived; they didn’t “let him walk right by.” From the court documents you sent me, here is what was stated: MR. SCHNEIDER: “Okay. Why don’t you just play the video thank you, Mr. Dabashi. Fran, can you just resume playing, please?” MR. SCHNEIDER: “And as far as you know, Mr.Dabashi, is that Mr. Medina and his mother that are walking away in the upper part of the screen?” MO: “Yes.” MR. SCHNEIDER: “And that was your brother who’s closer to the police officer who I believe; correct?” MO: “Yes. Yes, and you can see his shadow under the truck talking to the police.” In researching for my letter… Read more »
Thank you for your further comments.