Victim of Manchester Buffet Restaurant Assault Gives Her Side of the Story

ENFIELD, CT - A local woman says she intends to file a lawsuit against a Windsor couple who injured her and her son during a melee at a Manchester buffet restaurant last weekend.

Denise Avery and her 21-year-old son Vinnie were injured April 2 during an altercation at the Royal Buffet that resulted in the arrest of Clifford Knight, 45, and Lataya Knight, 38.

In an email to Patch, Avery said initial press accounts that the incident was a dispute over crab legs was inaccurate; rather, the trouble began when she and other customers asked restaurant management to tell a young girl who was with the Knights to stop putting her hands into the food.

She wrote, "This couple started threatening me after several of us customers asked their child to not play by putting her hands in the crab leg water. The woman threatened me and then the husband did, so my son stepped in and told the man not to talk to me that way."

Avery said Clifford Knight pushed her son, he pushed back, and then "that guy punched my son in the face and that guy and the rest of his party of nine jumped on my son. I then pepper sprayed them all to get them off my son. At that point they couldn't breathe and we thought they were leaving but the man turned around to yell at me and distract me as his wife walked around behind me, grabbed my hair from behind, punched me twice in the back of the head and she held me by my hair as her husband punched me in the face, breaking my nose."

She sustained a "concussive disorder," while her son suffered a broken tooth, split lip and bruised face.

Avery and her son met with Manchester police a few days after the incident, armed with medical reports, and are hopeful additional charges will be filed.

Photos courtesy of Manchester Police Department