WESTFIELD – The holiday time of year may be the season to be jolly, but occasionally it can also be a time for tempers to flare, fists to fly and fighting customers to roll on the floor of a store because of an unintended slight.
On the Monday before Christmas, city police were called by a T. J. Maxx employee who reported that two women had been fighting in the store and were heading to the parking lot.
Officer Brendan Irujo was the first officer to arrive and found only one of the involved women was still in the parking lot. The other, he learned, had left in an identified vehicle.
The woman who had not left told Irujo that, while pushing her shopping cart into a checkout lane, she bumped the cart of another customer. She said that she immediately attempted to apologize but, right away, the other woman started to yell at her, got in her face and invited her to “take this outside.”
The first woman said the other woman pushed her and she pushed her back in self defense. Within moments, the two women were on the floor, punching each other and pulling each other’s hair, the woman said.
The women were separated by store staff and left the store.
One drove away but officers Aleksandr Golenev and Christopher Coach spotted her vehicle minutes later on the national guard bridges and stopped it.
She returned to the Little River Plaza to present her side of the story.
The woman told Irujo that when her cart was bumped she thought one of her children had shoved it and, when she began yelling at her daughter, the other woman thought she was yelling ather. She said the other woman grabbed her shoulder and, when she pushed the woman away, the other woman pushed her back and the fracas began.
Irujo reports that none of the store personnel reported witnessing the start of the fight and none could say who instigated it.
Neither woman wished to pursue criminal charges, Irujo reports, and both were advised that either of them could later choose to seek a criminal complaint at Westfield District Court.
