Iraq veteran badly beaten in Lakewood bar fight over pool chalk

Iraq veteran badly beaten in Lakewood bar fight over pool chalk
March 5, 2012

LAKEWOOD, Wash. — Police in Lakewood are looking for a man they say attacked an Iraq War veteran in a barroom fight that apparently started over a piece of pool chalk.

Todd Hotis says he had gone to the bar with his son-in-law to play pool and that trouble started when he asked a man, Christopher Kuep, if he had seen a lost piece of pool chalk. Minutes later, Hotis says, Kuep and another man, Gary Ellis, started a fight.

“I thought these guys were going to kill me,” Hotis says. “Pool sticks over and over were hitting my head and my back. I was just getting hit all over.”

Hotis has been deployed in Iraq and has suffered concussions while on duty. He’s even been awarded a Purple Heart. But he says nothing was worse than the beating he took at the hands of his attackers in Lakewood.
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