Kelsey Grammer's daughter Spencer slashed in the arm by blade-wielding drunk diner at New York restaurant
Spencer Grammer, daughter of actor Kelsey Grammer, was reportedly slashed in the arm while confronting a blade-wielding drunk at a New York restaurant Friday night. Speaking to the New York Post on Saturday, multiple law enforcement sources revealed how the mayhem erupted at around 11:30 pm at The Black Ant restaurant in East Village. A heavy-set man reportedly went into a drunken rage after being unable to get a table at the eatery because it was about to close, sources and witnesses said. The inebriated individual refused to leave the restaurant and instead became embroiled in an altercation with a male diner. The scene was soon crowded by more than a dozen employees and bystanders. At the time, 36-year-old Grammer and her friend Jan Phillip Mueller, 32 were at the restaurant but not involved in the argument. However, they decided to help defuse the situation after the drunken man reportedly started swinging a "silver blade," per one law enforcement source.
“Everyone jumped out of their seats. About 15 people maybe. Everyone was trying to pull them apart,” a witness named David told The Post of the blade-wielding man and the diner. “It looked like there was a full-on brawl.” Police sources told the paper how the assailant slashed Grammer in the right forearm and her friend Mueller across the back during the chaos. The duo was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where both received stitches to close their wounds and later released. David, whose windows overlook the sidewalk where the fight broke out, said he "heard yelling" and was forced to look out of the window. On the sidewalk, he saw the angry drunk and the diner swearing loudly at one another, while the latter was swinging a chair.
A waitress later told David that a racial slur hurled by the chair-swinging diner had set off the intoxicated man. “Some people got up to try to separate them,” David said of the two. “Some surrounded the guy with the chair, and some surrounded the stabber, before he became a stabber,” David said. “At one point a table got knocked over. Everyone jumped out of their seats — about 15 people maybe. Everyone was trying to pull them apart.” “Stop! Stop!” bystanders screamed as they tried to quell the situation.
“One guy was trying to restrain the stabber,” David said of Grammer’s brave pal. “Then I saw blood coming out of the lower right-hand side of his back. I saw enough blood coming out to tell that something was going on," he added.
While David dialed 911, other diners somehow managed to wrestle the blade-wielding man to the ground. However, he was "really well built, so he got away."
Authorities responded within a minute of David's 911 call, he said, but the "buff, bald" slasher had already fled on Third Street. Sources told the Post that cops don't believe the attacker was homeless. There still some dried blood outside The Black Ant Saturday afternoon. “I’ve been quarantining outside of the city and had just gotten back, and there is a stabbing outside of my apartment,” David told The Post. “This is my welcome back to New York.” Meanwhile, “Frasier” star Kelsey Grammer appeared to downplay his daughter’s injury on Saturday. “There are elements of truth to the story but Spencer was not slashed; she is fine," a representative told the outlet.