The woman who was attacked in front of a Cracker Barrel in 2009 has filed a lawsuit seeking damages from the restaurant chain and the man who hit her.
Tashawnea Yeasha Hill is asking for a jury trial in a lawsuit filed Friday in Clayton County State Court and obtained by the AJC. Hill claims she has endured "immense and intense physical and emotional pain and suffering" in the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.
Hill's attraction national media attention after Troy Dale West Jr. was arrested for kicking and yelling racial slurs at her in front of a Cracker Barrel in Morrow on Sept. 9, 2009, after she told him he had almost hit her then 7-year-old daughter with the restaurant door.
Hill's daughter watched as West assaulted her mother while yelling racial slurs, police said. West, of Poulan, testified that Hill initiated the fight by spitting on him, which she denied.
Witnesses told police that Hill kept telling West that she was in the Army.
“She kept saying, ‘Sir, I’m a United States soldier, don’t do this,’ ” Morrow Police Capt. James Callaway said.
The attack raised questions about the need for hate crime laws in Georgia and prompted an FBI Civil Rights Division investigation.
West was facing a maximum of 44 years in prison before a plea deal ended his trial with a 6-month sentence. He was released in December 2010 after serving 43 days.
Hill's attorney, Tesha Clemmons, was not available for comment Wednesday afternoon.
A spokeswoman for Cracker Barrel told the AJC Wednesday that the company had not yet been served with the lawsuit.
"This never had anything to do with Cracker Barrel, except for the location," Julie Davis, Cracker Barrel spokeswoman, told the AJC.
Davis said the Morrow restaurant manager put himself in harm's way when the incident between Hill and West occurred.
"He was a hero," Davis said.
Hill contends that the manager did not help her, and that two restaurant employees "observed the incident as it was taking place and failed to exercise ordinary care to protect the plaintiffs," the lawsuit states.
Hill, 37, was arrested in June after fighting with a woman in the front yard of a Hampton, Ga., home.
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