A man has been arrested on charges of assault after allegedly punching a police officer for touching his girlfriend at a supermarket, prosecutors in New York have said.

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said that 27-year-old Tommie D. Williams of Jamaica, Queens, was charged with assaulting an off-duty police officer earlier this week in a St. Albans supermarket parking lot, following a minor disagreement minutes earlier in the store that involved the defendant's girlfriend.

"The defendant is accused of allowing a relatively minor bumping incident in a supermarket – to which he was not even directly involved – to rapidly escalate into a violent assault that resulted in him causing serious physical injury to his victim," District Attorney Brown said.

Williams of 140-33 173rd Street in Jamaica, is awaiting arraignment in Queens Criminal Court on charges of second-degree assault and second-degree harassment.
If convicted, he faces up to seven years in prison.
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Police investigation say a 42-year-old off-duty New York City Police Officer was shopping at the Pathmark supermarket located at 134-40 Springfield Boulevard on Monday, when he accidentally bumped into Williams' girlfriend.

Williams then verbally confronted the officer, telling him that he would be waiting outside for him. The officer finished shopping and was walking to his car in the parking lot approximately five minutes later, when Williams approached and punched him in the face, causing the officer to fall to the ground.

As the officer approached the vehicle and tried to take a photograph of it with his cellphone, Williams exited the vehicle and again punched officer in the face, causing him to again fall to the ground, before fleeing in the vehicle.

The officer suffered three fractures to his face, which required hospitalization and the surgical implantation of a metal plate. Metal wires also had to be placed in his face.

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