WASHINGTON — His neighbors voted him into office, but one District man is facing assault charges for an incident that started in a grocery store and ended with a U.S. Secret Service agent finding him in a restaurant bathroom.
On Tuesday afternoon, Glenarden police responded to a Wegmans grocery in Lanham, Maryland, where a woman said her boyfriend, D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Kendall Simmons, punched her and bit her left hand, drawing blood, according to court documents.
A U.S. Secret Service Agent spotted Simmons, a member of ANC 8E, leaving the store for a nearby Hawaiian barbecue restaurant. When the agent saw Simmons peek out of the restaurant bathroom and slam the door shut, the charging documents say, he alerted a police officer who drew his weapon and ordered Simmons out.
“[Simmons] turned and began yelling, ‘Get the [expletive] off of me.’ I immediately told him to calm down, that he was under arrest, and that he was being disorderly; he did not comply,” the responding officer noted in the charging documents.
“He continued to scream, and cuss and would not submit to arrest,” the documents said — adding that the police had to use “generous amounts of force” to get handcuffs on him.
Simmons is now facing charges of second-degree assault and disorderly conduct and has a court hearing on Sept. 12.
In an unrelated event a few days earlier, Simmons said D.C. police officers slammed him to the ground in Southeast for no reason.
The police said they thought he was armed.
They did not file charges.
