Pastor Arrested for Punching Rotary Club President Over Food Giveaway

A 70-year-old Florida pastor was arrested and charged with aggravated battery of an elderly person after he allegedly punched a Rotary Club president.

The tension was rooted in a misunderstanding over a food drive in the Opa-Locka neighborhood, Miami Herald reported.

Both the Rotary Club of Doral and Mount Tabor Baptist Ministries do weekly food giveaways to the local community in the area but this particular collaborative effort went horribly wrong on Wednesday when Pastor Burnice Mikell arrived at the church to find Rotary volunteers unpacking groceries from a truck and putting them into bags.

He reportedly assumed the items were meant for the church's giveaway scheduled for the following day and asked the Rotary Club to move everything inside the church to be stored until then. He did not realize the food was part of the Rotary Club's donations.

Things escalated when Mikell approached Felipe Madrigal, 70, the president of the Rotary Club, who claimed the pastor began yelling at him before punching him. Witnesses claim Madrigal raised his hands in defense but was knocked out by "this man."

Mikell had a different story.

"I didn’t know who he was and he ran in my face and I hit him," he said. "I thought he was fixing to hit me. I was defending myself on my property."

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