Jacqueline Kent Cooke Says She Broke Finger In Purse-Swinging Scuffle With Jewish Lawyer
Matt Haberkorn, left, after being hit with a glass clutch by Jacqueline Kent Cooke, right. Image by Facebook/Forward Montage
(JTA) — During her trial for assault, a socialite who is accused of hitting a lawyer with and making an anti-Semitic remark said she sustained serious injuries in the incident.
Jacqueline Kent Cooke, daughter of the late billionaire Jack Kent Cooke, on Thursday appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court, where prosecutors said they were seeking her medical records stemming from her clash with Matthew Haberkorn on New Year’s Eve, the New York Post reported.
Her right hand was bandaged as a result of an injury she said she sustained in the incident, and which she also said required the surgical insertion last month of a titanium implant into her right ring finger.
Cooke was charged with second-degree assault in the New Year’s Eve incident, in which she allegedly hit Haberkorn with a purse made out of glass.
Prosecutors said Thursday that they are still probing the incident and have yet to present her case to a grand jury.
According to the New York Daily News, Haberkorn, 52, of the San Francisco area, his mother, wife and four daughters were collecting their outdoor gear from a coat check after eating at a high-end Manhattan restaurant when Cooke allegedly told him, “Hurry up, Jew. I got places to be.” Cooke disputes this, saying her words were: “Excuse me, I have to get through.”
Haberkorn’s wife, Linda Thomas, who according to the Daily News is not Jewish, replied: “We all got places to be. You know what? I take total offense at that. You’re small-minded.”
Cooke’s boyfriend got involved, saying “Happy bat mitzvah, girls,” the Daily News reported.
When Haberkorn confronted Cooke outside over her comments, she reportedly hit him over the head with her glass purse, a Lulu Guinness Chloe Mirrored Perspex Box Clutch that sells for $300, and pulled him to the ground. He sustained a large cut on his head.
Haberkorn in the Daily News described Cooke as “clearly drunk.”
Cooke accused Haberkorn of cursing at her. One of Haberkorn’s daughters shot video of the incident outside the restaurant on her cellphone. Cooke and her boyfriend ran off following the confrontation, the Daily News reported.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
