A possible motive that goes back to a high-profile attack inside Applebee’s seven years ago has been revealed in a barroom brawl that left one man stabbed and two others facing felony charges.
Charles James Cole, 34, and Anthony Phillip Lopez, 54, are charged with aggravated assault for attacking Jeff Morton at Cowboy Up earlier this month. Lopez was added for his part in the brawl that reportedly began when Cole asked Morton his name and then hit him in the head with a beer bottle.
Evidence from the bar’s surveillance camera is what prompted lawmen to charge Lopez, even though he was stabbed during the fight by Morton.
According to deputy Evan Cooper, video shows Cole pointing out Morton to Lopez before the assault. The same video shows Cole stomping on Morton while he is on the floor.
“Mr. Morton, in self-defense, uses a pocket knife to cut Mr. Lopez in the calf of the leg,” Cooper reported, noting Lopez continued the attack even as the brawl was being broken up by the bar staff. “Lopez then used a stool and strikes the victim in the head two times.”
While no motive was immediately provided, a check of front pages of the Southern Standard from 2010 and 2011 reveals the likely reason for the attack.
Cole was slashed in the face by Morton during an incident near the bar at Applebee’s in front of a restaurant full of patrons. Morton was arrested and charged with felony assault, but was acquitted following a high-profile trial in which jurors found he acted in self-defense when Cole approached him.
Cole told jurors Morton had been harassing his female friend and he was trying to intervene when Morton cut him without provocation.
“I was scared and trying to protect myself,” defendant Jeffery Earl Morton, then 52, told the jury from the witness stand during the 2011 trial.
Cole disagreed, saying Morton was quick to slash his face.
“The first thing I remember was I was tasting my own blood,” the victim said during the trial, noting he had just approached when Morton slashed his face and arm, the arm injury requiring 18 staples to close at Erlanger. “I believe he was trying to slash my brother when I stepped in.”
Whether the Cowboy Up attack was actually payback for the Applebee’s incident from 2011 will not impact the felony charges since they are based on what the video shows and not the motive for the attack.