A former mayor of Smyrna was involved in a physical altercation in a grocery store parking lot after an assistant manager questioned his alleged sexual advances toward a 16-year-old cashier.
Max Bacon, 73, who served as mayor for 34 years before retiring in 2019, smelled of alcohol during the April 25 incident at a Food Depot on South Cobb Drive, according to a Cobb County police report obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
No one was cited with criminal charges in the incident.
Bacon has not returned calls seeking comment.
In the report, a Smyrna police officer working off-duty security at the store said he saw Bacon talking to the cashier before he later observed the employee running out of the building. The officer said he noticed the odor of alcohol on the former mayor’s breath after Bacon finished checking out and approached him.
The store manager then asked the officer if he could help with an incident in the parking lot, where he observed Bacon and Oscar Castro, an assistant store manager, in a heated discussion, according to the report.
Castro pushed Bacon to the ground when the officer tried to separate them, the report said.
Another assistant manager told the officer Bacon made inappropriate comments to the cashier, which started the altercation. Smyrna police requested Cobb County officers take over the investigation due to Bacon’s former role as mayor.
Cobb County’s Crime Against Children unit arrived on the scene and interviewed the cashier, who said Bacon told her she was beautiful and that it would be fun if she came back to his house, according to the report. She said Bacon leaned toward her to speak but did not attempt to touch her.
Bacon told the officer that he couldn’t remember if the cashier was male or female, the report says. The Cobb County police officer writing the report also smelled alcohol and requested a breathalyzer test.
Bacon agreed, but the results were redacted in the report provided to the AJC. The Marietta Daily Journal has reported Bacon’s blood alcohol concentration as being 0.104, which is above the legal driving limit of 0.08. The police report did not indicate how Bacon arrived at the grocery store, but did say he left the scene with his attorney.
The cashier left the scene in the care of her mother, police said.
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