Attorney Matthew Haberkorn alleges that socalite Jacqueline Kent Cooke called his mother a "Jew" and attacked him with a glass purse. (Pool/Instagram)
The socialite NFL heiress who was arrested last week after allegedly bloodying a man with a $300 glass purse is denying that she ever said “Hurry up, Jew” before the fight broke out – instead, she claims that she said, “Excuse me, I have to get through.”
The episode began when Jacqueline Kent Cooke, the daughter of former Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, was leaving the Upper East Side restaurant Caravaggio with her boyfriend on New Year’s Eve.
Matthew Haberkorn was injured after an alleged assault by Jacqueline Kent Cooke. (Image courtesy Matthew Haberkorn)
The family of personal injury attorney Matthew Haberkorn, 52, was taking a “really long time looking for their tickets” in the cloakroom, Cooke told the New York Post.
Cooke, who said her grandmother is Jewish, claims that when she explained she had to “get through,” Haberkorn’s 77-year-old mother “immediately screamed at the top of her lungs” that Cooke had called her a “Jew.”
“I was mortified and I tried to calm things down by explaining, ‘I didn’t call anyone a Jew, I was just asking to get through,’” Cooke said. “But by this point Mr. Haberkorn’s wife and his daughters were yelling at me, and everyone in the restaurant was looking. I had no idea they were even Jewish.”
Cooke has been charged with felony assault for allegedly striking Haberkorn on the head with a pricey Lulu Guinness mirrored Perspex clutch after he ran out of the bathroom to confront her.
In a video of the incident taken by one of Haberkorn’s daughters, Haberkorn appears to accuse Cooke of calling him a Jew as well.
“You called me a f-----g bitch, you called me a c–t!” Cooke screams in the video.
“You called me a f–---g Jew!” Haberkorn retorts.
Cooke, who was represented by a public defender in her first court appearance, accused Haberkorn of seeing dollar signs.
“The guy Haberkorn — who is a professional personal injury lawyer — did a number on me, then he looked me up, found out who my dad is, and saw dollar signs when he learned my name.
He assumed I was a billionaire, which I’m not,” Cooke told the New York Post. “I live on a budget like anyone else, I get a monthly allowance, I am not shopping on Madison Avenue, I take the subway, and I am very frugal. I am not Paris Hilton.”
The socialite filed a cross-complaint for assault against Haberkorn.
But Haberkorn, who says that his wife heard Cooke make the alleged anti-Semitic comment, did not appear to be convinced.
“Not surprisingly, Ms. Kent-Cooke has come up with yet another version of events, as she scrambles to avoid responsibility for her offensive behavior,” Haberkorn’s lawyer, Andrew Miltenberg, said in a statement to the New York Daily News.
“She is not sorry, only embarrassed in her social circles. Instead of more half-truths and fabrications, Ms. Kent-Cooke, how about an apology,” Miltenberg said.
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