Woman Allegedly Punches Cop Who Told Her To Stop Using Her Bare Hands At The Salad Bar

A restaurant customer allegedly punched a cop in the face after the officer told her not to reach into the salad bar with her bare hands.

The unsanitary altercation that KFOR, Channel 4 in Oklahoma City, described as “a real-life food fight” reportedly occurred at Mazzio’s Pizza in OKC.

The Oklahoma County deputy, who was off duty at the time and having lunch with her two kids, spotted the suspect allegedly using her hands rather than utensils to pile salad on her plate.

The first time around, the deputy alerted the pizza restaurant staff who swapped out the greens with a fresh bowl.

The suspect then “went back to the salad bar and used her bare hands to fill her plate again, so the deputy told her that she shouldn’t do that, police said. [The suspect] punched her in the face with a clenched fist, knocking off her glasses, according to the report,” KOCO in Oklahoma City reported.

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After cops arrived at the scene, the suspect, identified as Lindsay Tenae Williams, 29, “was booked into the Oklahoma County jail on an assault and battery complaint and was later released,” NewsOK added.

The salad bar at that restaurant may or may not have been all you can eat, but evidently all you can grab was inappropriate.

“When you go to a salad bar or buffet, you have to just kind of pretend that ALL the other people aren’t contaminating the food with their germs and general filth. So it’s JARRING when you actually witness the contamination,” 106.9 More FM in Nevada observed about the Oklahoma City salad bar assault.

In a separate incident, a brawl between two families allegedly broke out over access to crab legs at an Asian buffet restaurant in Connecticut that resulted in two arrests.

In a follow-up account, one of those allegedly involved in the altercation claimed it wasn’t about seafood per se, but more related to restaurant hygiene, the Hartford Courant reported. “[The customer], however, said in an interview and in her statement to police that she and other customers were concerned not about the [suspects’] crab leg haul, but rather about a young girl with the couple who was running her fingers through water in the crab leg bowl. [The customer] said she and other diners thought this was unsanitary and complained to restaurant staff.”

In general, for some reason the crab legs station typically tends to receive an inordinate amount of attention from diners at many all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants despite the many other food choices available at these venues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6nOgeRNeUI

According to the NutritionAction website, there are some food-safety concerns associated with salad bars (and presumably, by extension, buffet food in general).

“The most important concern about salad bars is the temperature of the various foods. Hot foods should be hot—if you can’t see steam, steer clear. Cold foods should be cold—not just cool, but refrigerator cold to keep most bacteria from multiplying…If the salad bar is holding everything at the right temperature, be sure that a plastic ‘splash guard’ is covering the food to keep out germs from customers (including you). If there’s no guard, skip the salad…Last but not least, scan the lip around the bar area. It should be clean and pest-free…”

Assuming there are no “handsy” customers in the immediate vicinity, do you find restaurant salad bars appealing as a healthy option? Do you think salad bars are generally sanitary?

[Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/AP]