A Florida Black man who worked at Dunkin’ has reached a plea deal with Tampa prosecutors to resolve charges resulting from his fatal altercation with a customer last year.
Before he was fatally assaulted, the victim used a racial slur against the defendant, a term the state attorney’s office considered, “the most aggressive and offensive term in the English language.”
According to CBS News, Corey Pujols’ plea deal reduced his manslaughter charge to felony battery and afforded him a sentence of two years of house arrest, followed by three years’ probation.
On Monday, March 8, Judge Christine Marlewski additionally ordered the 27-year-old to complete 200 hours of community service and attend an anger management course as a reckoning for the May 4, 2021, incident that resulted in the death of Vonelle Cook, a 77-year-old white man that called Pujols the n-word.
Grayson Kamm, a spokesman for Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, stated that there were “two of the primary factors” considered when crafting the plea deal for Pujols.
He said that they “were the aggressive approach the victim took toward the defendant and everyone working with the defendant and that the victim repeatedly used possibly the most aggressive and offensive term in the English language.”
The day of the confrontation, Cook was dissatisfied with the service at the drive-thru window as he tried to order coffee at the Dunkin’ on 410 S 50th St. in Tampa’s Palm River area. He decided to go into the restaurant and complained loudly about the business’ poor service. Pujols, an employee on shift, asked the man to leave but he did not. He also asked a co-worker to call 911.
Instead, Cook continued to blast the workers and interjected the racial epithet into his tirade. Pujols abandoned his station behind the counter and approached the man, asking him to stop using the word. Defiantly, Cook said the N-word again.
Pujols responded by punching the white man in the face, connecting with his jaw, causing him to fall and hit his head on the floor.
Crime Online reported that police and rescue crews were called to the store, and upon arrival found Cook unconscious and bleeding from his head. Three days later, Cook died from injuries sustained from the encounter. A Florida autopsy confirmed the man’s death was a result of a fractured skull and brain contusions caused by blunt trauma to the head.
The employee was originally arrested and charged with assault, but the charge was elevated to manslaughter once Cook died.
The prosecution also noted that it decided to reduce the charge in the arrangement, by examining a “totality of the circumstances,” including Pujols’ background, the fact he didn’t have a criminal history and that he did not mean to cause the man’s death when he punched him.
Before his death, Cook was required to register as a sex offender after police raided his home in 2006 and found a camera in his bedroom, a collection of homemade videos and DVDs, and nude pictures of men and underaged boys.
Cook was arrested and convicted of ten separate sex crimes, including unlawful sex with minors, possessing child porn, and “lewd, lascivious sexual battery with a victim between 12-15 years old” in 2008. The prosecution accused him of using candy, video games, and comic books to lure boys into his home, make them create pornographic videos, including one where he filmed himself performing a sexual act on a teenager.
He was released from prison in 2011.
