A mentally ill man caught on video ruthlessly beating a cellphone store employee in Phoenix has been arrested, police said.
Michael Cook, 33 — whose family said he has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia but doesn’t take his medication regularly — was arrested Tuesday in the brutal attack on a Cricket Wireless employee, Phoenix police said.
Department officials previously posted a 57-second clip of Saturday’s attack, which occurred as Maria Coronado, 22, was working alone at the store.
“How can I help you?” Coronado asked the man in the clip identified by cops as Cook.
The disturbed suspect immediately launched himself onto Coronado, taking her to the floor and punching her relentlessly as she screams and pleads for him to stop, the footage shows.
The agonizing assault continued as Cook got back onto his feet and began stomping Coronado. He then walked off into a back room — where he allegedly stole cash and phones — as the battered worker ran out of the store, according to the clip.
Cook has been charged with robbery, kidnapping, assault and criminal trespassing. His mother told cops he was not taking his schizophrenia medication at the time, KSAZ reported.
Cook told cops he heard voices in his head to kill himself before assaulting Coronado. Police said he also admitted stealing three cellphones, selling two of them later for fentanyl and methamphetamine, according to the station.
Coronado needed several stitches to close a gash on her face and had a fractured nose.
“He was evil,” she told KSAZ. “He knew what he was doing. This was premeditated. He came four times the whole day, just seeing if there were customers, if I was alone. On Wednesday, he literally told a manager, ‘I’m going to come back and kill you.’”
Cook was a regular customer at the store, Coronado said, but no one had contacted cops about the prior alleged threat. She now fears working alone after the ferocious assault.
“It just breaks my heart that no matter what I did — I plead with him, I even told him I was pregnant just to see if maybe that he would stop, and he didn’t,” she told KSAZ. “He just kept on going and going and going.”
An online fundraiser set up on behalf of Coronado had raised more than $2,500 as of Thursday.
“This could’ve happened to anyone working on the job,” the website reads. “No one should ever have to go through this.”
Cook was turned in to police by his relatives, AZFamily.com reported.
“We’ve been trying to get him help, he doesn’t take it,” brother Malik Cook told the outlet. “And then we hope when he is outside, he doesn’t go and abuse people.”
Malik Cook said he hopes his brother’s arrest serves as a wake-up call.
“Either you figure out a better decision for how you live, or you end up in [prison] the rest of your life,” he told AZFamily.com.
