This violent brawl that was caught on camera broke out inside a kosher supermarket in Brooklyn when managers allegedly threw a peach at a woman and tackled her in an argument over a hoverboard.
Shocking video posted on YouTube shows the 24-year-old woman’s father, 41-year-old Mark Soto, punching store employees in the head and threatening to kill them in front of horrified shoppers.
NYPD said three people – the father and two store managers, Abraham Spielman, 21, and Mattis Edelstein, 29 – were arrested for assault after the chaotic scene unfolded at the Central Market in Williamsburg on June 9.
Gary Schlesinger, the witness who recorded the video, claimed Soto’s daughter was politely asked to stop riding a hoverboard around the store after knocking items off the shelves and leaving it ‘in a mess’.
However, Soto’s daughter, Julissa, claimed to DNAinfo it was her teenage nephew who was asked to stop riding the hoverboard in the shop.
She claimed the teen didn’t hear the manager and one of them shoved him and ordered him to leave the store, so she shoved him back.
Police said Edelstein allegedly hurled a peach at her and Spielman tackled her to the floor.
Julissa Soto told DNA info a peach was thrown at her ‘very hard’, but her father told NBC News the manager threw a can of Coke.
‘My daughter tells me after the fact, when she felt something hit her face, she looked down and saw a can of Coke,’ Mark Soto said. ‘There was no peach.’
The family gave reporters a photo that showed Julissa Soto with bruising and a large cut under her right eye.
After her confrontation with managers, Julissa Soto called her father, who arrived and got into a fight with staff.
Footage shows him pursuing one manager in particular and punching him in the face, knocking his yamulke off his head, near the checkout tills.
Surrounded by screaming employees and Soto family members, the manager backs into stacks of cardboard boxes and is punched in the head again as boxes tumble down on top of him.
Another employee tries to intervene but gets a punch to the head.
Mark Soto then tells the manager ‘I’m going to kill you’ before he delivers another punch to his face, sending him stumbling backwards.
As a woman urges him not to let the manager leave the store, Mark Soto screams several times: ‘I’ll f***ing kill you.’
He shouts ‘I’ll kill you, n*****’ as a family member stops him from approaching the manager again and forces him out of the store.
An employee is shown holding up an unfolded cardboard box as a shield.
Mark Soto told NBC News he was just defending his family after his daughter was attacked, and while the video shows him as the aggressor he is not to blame.
‘I might have said a couple of words out of anger, but nothing that I would actually, physically do to anyone,’ he said. ‘I would never harm anyone.’
The manager who allegedly threw the peach was charged with felony assault.
However, Schlesinger claimed in a Facebook post that the manager was falsely accused of throwing the fruit and the employees were innocent.
He said the manager who received multiple punches to the head was left with a bloodied nose and hands.