LAKE COUNTY, Fla. – A Groveland police officer was arrested after an attack at Froggers Bar and Grill in Mount Dora earlier this month, according to the Mount Dora Police Department.
An affidavit shows that police were called to the restaurant on July 18 around 6:26 p.m. after reports about the battery.
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Police said that they learned from the manager that a man and a woman had been yelling at one another on the patio before leaving the property in a silver sedan. The manager said customers told him that there had been a physical fight before he showed up on the patio, according to police.
Security camera footage of the fight shows the man apparently attempting to intimidate the woman before grabbing her by the hair, hitting her head against the wooden guard railing and then placing his hand around her neck, the affidavit states.
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The woman didn’t fight back, but a witness eventually approached the man, ending the attack, police said.
Investigators said they were able to identify the attacker as 48-year-old Joshua Somers, an officer with the Groveland Police Department.
According to police, other customers at the restaurant confirmed the events seen in the security footage, and so officers went to Somers’ home.
Somers told police that he had been at Froggers and had grabbed the woman’s hair, but he denied battering her in any other way, police said. The victim agreed with Somers, though she grew upset when police confronted her with the events in the security footage, police added.
Investigators said that both Somers and the woman were heavily intoxicated during this time.
Somers was ultimately arrested and taken into custody at the Lake County Jail. He faces a charge of battery by strangulation.
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