Arrests over a crying child, flying popcorn

Alex Horton

We’ve all been there. Someone talks during the movie in the theater, and sighs permeate as everyone waits for someone else to confront the offender.

But most people let a 2-year-old girl slide.

That’s not the case, however, with Keri Karman, police say, who is accused of raining popcorn and the empty tub on a child at an AMC movie theater in Levittown, Long Island. She and her father were arrested at the weekend after an investigation of the January 2 incident, the New York Post reported.

It played out against a screening of the PG-13 rated Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Celia Riggs, 28, had settled into her seat with her husband, Scottie, and three children to watch the film, the Post reported. Her 2-year-old daughter asked for some popcorn and Karman, 25, told the girl to be quiet, police said. Riggs “asked the unknown female not to talk to her daughter,” a Nassau County Police Department incident summary said. “All she said was ‘popcorn.’ She didn’t even say a full sentence,” Riggs, 28, told the Post. Then it got ugly, authorities said. Karman allegedly began to curse at the girl and Riggs and placed her hand over the child’s mouth. Then Karman showered the girl in popcorn and struck her with the empty container. Karman then fled with her father, Charles, as Riggs’ daughter cried. The girl had a contusion, authorities said.

The Karmans were charged with endangering the welfare of a child.

Abby Levitt Ferrara, a friend of Karman, defended her on Facebook. “Too bad you didn’t hear the real story!! When asked to quiet the kid, the mother pushed Keri and the popcorn went flying,” Ferrara wrote. “Keri never raised a hand in any way . . . there is not an aggressive bone in Keri’s body.”

Riggs disputed that version of events to the paper, denying she ever pushed Karman. “No one else complained about her. If she was this screaming monster child, someone else might have said something, and between the adults she was with, someone would have taken her out.”