Bachelorette party was striking for wrong reasons
NEW ORLEANS — In a bachelorette party gone wrong, a bar's security guard decked a bride-to-be and punched at least one of her friends.
The women from Houston had come to the French Quarter for a fun time before a wedding but ended up with bruises after a big misunderstanding, Samantha Rice said. It all began when she put her head down at about 12:05 a.m. CT Saturday at New Orleans Original Daiquiris bar on Bourbon Street.
“The bartender came up to me and started cursing at me and said I couldn't sit there,” she said. She knocked over a stack of plastic cups and tried to leave, but a security guard, whom police later identified as Darrell Wayne Mitchell of Safeway Security, grabbed and pinned her in the corner.
“He yanked me into the bar and pinned me against it,” said Rice, who has bruises over both of her arms. “I asked him to loosen his grip because he was hurting me really bad.”
Her friend Lacey Faulkner jumped in to help and was hit several times.
“I think he hit me about three or four times,” Faulkner said. “My jaw is sore. He hit me in the back of my head. I was under the bar stools, and he was just hitting on me.”
Then the bride-to-be, whom the women did not identify, exchanged words with Mitchell, 40, who later was issued a municipal summons on a charge of battery in the incident. The guard's punch landed her on the ground.
“He was just too rough with her in my opinion, and we were just asking him to stop,” Faulker said.
Reginald Rowe, a former New Orleans Police Department officer who now runs his own security firm, said proper training could have created much better outcome.
“This entire situation could have been handled totally different if he had been thinking as this was going on,” Rowe said. “It is important to be able to know how to de-escalate situations, especially when someone is inebriated. I don't understand why he took it so high.”
In the video, New Orleans police officers on foot patrol in the area, summoned by witnesses, are spotted arriving at the scene, according to a city police department press release issued Tuesday. An initial police report has not been filed yet.
Follow Antwan Harris on Twitter: @antwanharris
