$20 debt leads to melee at Florida Girl Scout cookie stand

PALM COAST, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - Law enforcement officials say an argument over a $20 debt led to a melee at a Girl Scout cookie stand outside a Walmart store in central Florida.

Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staley had some harsh words for the suspects who caused the "mass chaos," and their mother.

“She certainly needs to know what it means to be a parent and it makes you wonder what kind of parent modeling she's done over the years for her boys to think this was acceptable behavior,” Staley said.

Deputies say Daniel Kennedy and his sixteen year old brother, went up to the Girl Scouts selling cookies, demanding twenty dollars they insisted one of the scouts owed them, or the equivalent in boxes of cookies. The sheriff’s report says when the girls refused, the boys "knocked all the cookies off the table and knocked the table over," and then "became physical, destroying the cookie booth."

They say people ran over to help the girls and their parents.

“When we got out over here, the kid in the white t-shirt had a woman up and he was just punching her, like she was up against the wall,” said Debra Boos, a good Samaritan bystander.

Deputies say the father of one of the girls, who just had heart surgery, started feeling chest pains and had to be rushed to the hospital.

Sheriff Staley hopes this is a one shot deal. “Hopefully this is a one-time occurrence with a couple of knuckleheads that didn't have good parental guidance, is what I'm hoping,” he said.

Kennedy and his brother are charged with battery and disorderly conduct. The sheriff encourages everyone to support Troop 1527's cookie-selling efforts, since he says 36 boxes of cookies were destroyed in the fight.