MEDLEY, Fla. – A traveling carnival worker is facing an aggravated battery charge in Miami-Dade County after stabbing a man while waiting in a food line at Santa’s Enchanted Forest just after 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to Medley police.
According to police, the worker, Nicholas Joe Moore, 32, of Meridian, Mississippi, approached a man waiting in line for food at the holiday attraction’s commissary area in an “aggressive manner” and “forcibly” pressed his right forearm against the victim’s neck, leading the victim to push him away.
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Police said a fight broke out and, after the two tumbled to the ground, Moore began stabbing the victim with a red Milwaukee box cutter.
Patrons separated the two after the victim began screaming that he was being stabbed, the report states.
Moore claimed that he had been waiting with his girlfriend in line for food when the victim approached him and the two began fighting, saying he brought out the box cutter once the victim began to “mount” him, the report states.
It states that Moore said that “while on the ground, a Black male brandished a gold firearm,” at which point “both parties disengaged.”
The arrest report doesn’t state what the alleged argument was about.
Police decided that Moore was the aggressor, taking him into custody on a charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony. He was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $10,000 bond as of Tuesday afternoon, according to jail records.
Santa’s Enchanted Forest, which was long held at southwest Miami-Dade’s Tropical Park, moved to 7400 NW 87th Ave. in Medley in 2022.