CHESTERFIELD, Mo. — A man was convicted Thursday for attacking a McDonald's restaurant manager with a rake, causing him to lose an eye.
Kendell Cooks, 38, was convicted of first-degree assault, armed criminal action and property damage stemming from the incident that took place in June 2019 at a Chesterfield McDonald's, according to a news release from the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.
The McDonald's manager fired Cooks' daughter for using profanity near customers and "wearing clothing not up to work standards," according to the release. The manager stumbled as he showed Cooks' daughter to the door and "slightly" bumped her from behind.
"She took that to be a shove," the release said.
Cooks' daughter called her aunt, who told Cooks that his daughter had been shoved out the door. Cooks then went to the McDonald's, along with someone else in another vehicle. They found the manager taking his break inside his parked car and used their vehicles to block him in.
Cooks found a garden rake that was among the store's landscaping tools and used it to beat in the driver's window, the release said. He assaulted the manager with the rake's wooden handle.
"In the brutal assault, the victim lost his left eye," the release said. "He also suffered nerve damage in his face and still has difficulty walking and driving."
The incident was recorded on the manager's dashboard camera and his 911 call.
Cooks confessed to the crime but defended his actions by saying the manager "laid his hands" on his daughter, despite store surveillance video showing "minimal and inadvertent" contact between the two, the release said. Defense attorneys also argued Cooks acted in "sudden passion."
"This act of senseless violence - based on a simple misunderstanding and a grotesque overreaction - shows once again that violence is no way to settle conflicts," St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said.
Cooks is scheduled to be sentenced next month.
