Yemassee official arrested after Savannah bar fight then assaulted girlfriend, police say
A Yemassee Town Council member who was arrested after a disturbance at a Beaufort hotel Monday was transferred to a Georgia jail on charges stemming from a bar fight and domestic assault almost a month earlier, newly obtained reports show.
Charlie Simmons, 36, faces one count each of aggravated assault, which is a felony, and simple battery, a misdemeanor. The Savannah Police Department was the arresting agency.
The bar fights
Around 12:45 a.m. July 7, officers responded to City Market in downtown Savannah following reports of a fight at Bar Bar.
A witness showed police a video with “Simmons holding another male by the shirt and striking him several times with a closed fist,” the report says, adding that a woman with Simmons tried to stop the fight by stepping between the men but “Simmons swung his fist over her head and hit” the man again.
The man Simmons allegedly hit told officers he saw the bartender ask Simmons to leave several times, but he refused and, at one point, poured a beer on one of the employees.
The man said he and his girlfriend were sitting at the bar when Simmons walked up behind them and grabbed the woman’s side, the report said. The man yelled at Simmons, and the physical altercation began.
The bartender confirmed she’d asked Simmons to leave because he cursed at her after she told him to stop “hitting on two women across the bar” because they appeared “uncomfortable,” according to the report.
As officers were leaving Bar Bar, they were approached by a manager from Pour Larry’s, another bar in City Market.
The manager told them Simmons had been asked to leave his bar earlier in the night “due to his intoxication.”
He said Simmons had come to the bar with an off-duty employee and that, a few minutes after Simmons was asked to leave, the employee returned with a “large laceration on his eyebrow” and said he got the injury when Simmons punched him in the face, the report said.
When police stopped Simmons and the woman identified as his girlfriend at a nearby intersection, Simmons said he had been at Bar Bar and Pour Larry’s but denied fighting anyone.
Simmons was “having difficult maintaining his balance, slurring his speech,” and was emitting the smell of alcohol, the officer wrote in the report. Based on the video evidence, witness statements and Simmons having small cuts on his knuckles and below his left eye with dried blood, he was arrested.
Due to COVID-19 safety protocols, Simmons was not physically booked at the jail, so police took him to a hotel where he was staying.
Hotel room assault
Weeks after the bar fights, the woman who had been with Simmons at the time contacted Savannah Police to report that he had assaulted her in their shared hotel room after officers dropped him off, a July 24 report says.
She told police Simmons told her, “You’re the reason I got arrested, you f------ b----,” before he pulled her off the bed by her feet causing her head to hit the ground, the report says.
He allegedly strangled her to the point where she began blacking out. She told police that Simmons bit her face and beat her “with enough force to leave severe tissue damage,” the report says.
She said she was able to poke him in the eyes to get away. A friend took her to Beaufort Memorial Hospital, “where she was hospitalized due to her injuries for an unknown amount of time,” the report said.
She told police she was “terrified” to report the incident because Simmons had previously threatened her.
A claim in the police report says Simmons is a member of the motorcycle gang Gangster Disciples.
Other arrests
Early Monday morning, Simmons was arrested at a Beaufort hotel with 11 bags of suspected cocaine on him after police received a call that he and a woman, who was not the same person he was in Savannah with, were yelling at each other. He was charged as a fugitive from justice on the felony arrest warrant out of Chatham County.
In an unrelated case from November 2019, Simmons was arrested by the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office and charged with driving under the influence, according to previous reporting. Court documents show that his case was continued and the charge is still pending.
Simmons is currently serving his first term on council, Yemassee town clerk Matt Garnes confirmed Monday. Simmons’ term began in November 2017, and his seat will be up for re-election this November.
Yemassee officials declined to comment, deferring questions about the arrests to law enforcement.
Editor’s note: If you’ve been a victim of domestic violence, Hopeful Horizons is a children’s advocacy, domestic violence and rape crisis center that provides services across the Lowcountry. You can reach their 24-support line at 843-770-1070.
This story was originally published August 3, 2021 at 12:29 PM.
