I spoke to Jerry Monaco..Kinda long

[vettechick99]

Thanks so much for this post. I've avoided all Tigger threads because I didn't feel it was right to jump on the Tig bandwagon. Just because it's WDW some people think they can do no wrong and I don't necessarily agree with that. But I do think it was an accident and it's been blown out of proportion.

Props to you for the classy letter you sent. He really does seem like a nice guy and I'm glad we got to hear his side of things.

 

[mickeyfan2]

He told me that his son really is a good kid, never been in trouble, never been in a fight, gets good grades in school etc.

Where have I heard this before......Oh yeah I remember all parents say this when their kid does something wrong.

 

[Cool-Beans]

Jerry Monaco is a liar and an (donkey). If he's calling people who send him mail, he's a weirdo, too. The kid is part punk and if he's getting teased at school, he deserves it.

And I'm not always on Disney's side. I'm usually not on Disney's side.

 

[momrek06]

How do you guys know there is a lawyer involved?

Becky

His name is Atty Mark Morsch, he has been on the early morning shows with the Monaco's and has been quoted in Newspapers. Atty Morsch IS representing the Monaco's in this matter.

 

[miss missy]

That thread was so big and so many were spewing at the guy, I can only imagine what the public was doing to the family out there. I think you were very classy in how you dealt with them! Thanks for being a DIS'er we can be proud of!

 

[blondeheroine]

Firstly can I say what a good post for this thread which has had a number of less than well considered posts.

You can and thanks.

 

[Esmerelda]

I just wanted to thank the original poster for posting her conversation. The whole thing brings to my mind something that happened at my house about 4 years ago.

It was December, I was still a single mom at the time and we got this huge snow. It was really deep. I was post op major surgery maybe 2 weeks. My youngest son (9) at the time said he would go out and shovel the driveway for me since he knew I couldn't do it whatsoever. It was just getting dark out due to winter and all. He went outside for maybe 10 minutes if it was that. The next thing I know he comes back in the house crying (he is not really a cryer at all?). I asked what was wrong, and he turns to show me his face. The neighbor kid across the street hurled an ice ball and got him right in his eye. His eye was quite swollen and looked nasty. I was livid!! Being as I couldn't trot across the street to speak to the parents, I had to phone them.

Keep in mind, this child across the street is the all around jock...only child and perfect in his parents eyes. I call, his father answers. I calmly asked why Tyler had to throw a snow/ice ball and hit my son. His response "he was retaliating". I asked "retaliating from what?". He claimed my son threw one first at his son and hit him. I laughed as I knew it was a lie for 2 reasons. My son has absolutely NO throwing ability to him whatsoever...he plays soccer! The other thing was my son was shoveling because I could hear him shoveling right up till the time I heard him run into the house. The family never apologized and I told my son to stay away from them period. Unfortunately, I had no proof of what had occurred. It was about 4 months later another neighbor mentioned my son and Tyler and the snow ball throwing incident. He had seen it out his front window and verified that my son was shoveling and had done no wrong. He never threw anything at anyone that evening. The ignorant family across the street still to this day would claim their precious boy can do NO wrong. Its very sad indeedy. My son is not even allowed to go near this child, he is like the spawn of satan. I know that sounds harsh but you would have to see it in action to believe it.

My point is: I think that Jerry Monaco has my neighbors syndrome. His son would never do anything to provoke an attack by a costume character...right. Its very sad because dad has set him up for a very hard life. He may not always be there to get the kid out of trouble. If I were them, I'd be ashamed of myself. While the only thing on their mind is money....the only thing really apparent is that they are making fools of themselves totally. Gee, where is mom thru all of this...wonder what she thinks? Why isn't she saying much...sort of odd isn't it.

For the record, I work in emergency medicine...this boy had no trauma to his neck....what a waste of the ER's time.

The best saying I've ever seen on a church sign "the best thing our kids can inherit from us is a good example"....Mr. Monaco is not setting one right now.


Esmerelda

 

[sweetascanbee]

His name is Atty Mark Morsch, he has been on the early morning shows with the Monaco's and has been quoted in Newspapers. Atty Morsch IS representing the Monaco's in this matter.

Thank you, I had not seen them on any of the shows or in the papers around here. Most of the people in town here never even heard about the whole thing. Everything I heard started here on the DIS.

From my conversation with Mr Monaco, although he was nothing but polite to me, it was obvious he was the big mouth type who spouts off about his opinion and then refuses to back down even when he is proven wrong. From what I heard him say I believe he realizes now he made a big mistake spouting off like that on TV. But he really believes his son was attacked so in his eyes he was only sticking up for his child. Which is why he over reacted. maybe if nothing else this whole expeiance will teach Mr Monaco to think before he speaks.

Becky

 

[SueM in MN]

First to the OP, it sounds like you did a very good job of dealing with a very unexpected phone call. Kuddos to you.

His name is Atty Mark Morsch, he has been on the early morning shows with the Monaco's and has been quoted in Newspapers. Atty Morsch IS representing the Monaco's in this matter.

If you do a google search for "Mark Morsch", it shows he is a personal injury lawyer in Florida. If you search within the results for "Tigger", it comes up with 276 entries.
One of the first interviews that came up was CBS News This Morning from Monday, Jan 8, 2007. Mark Morsch is already identified as their attorney. The interview says the 'Tigger Attack' took place on "Saturday" - so less than 2 days after the incident, they were already on national news giving interviews.

Also, if you go to the link for the police report, you can see that the police officer who wrote out the report, spoke with Mr. Monacho on 1/5/07 at 2200 at 2200 hours (10:20 pm). The report indicated Mr. Monacho says the incident occurred at about 12:30 pm on that same day.
The report also indicated that the incident had already been reported to the General Manager and to the Entertainment Manager.
This report also says that the officer who wrote this report had spoken with Officer Finlay, who had responded to the incident and gotten a statement from the Tigger performer (basically, that the performer could not see his handler and had gotten choked and knocked off balance by the person behind him).

It shows that the dad saying the only way to get a police report filed was to go to the media is not true. Already by less than 40 hours after the incident, he had gotten enough press to get on a national news show.

Most of the TV reports only showed the actual 'hit', and many of them showed the video zoomed in to show only Tigger and Jerry Jr.
Watching those gives a very different view of what happened. i don't have a link to the raw video, but that's much better than watching the heavily edited bits shown on TV.

The raw video shows much more - watch Tigger's nose, which is what he sees out of. When he is posing with the mom and the little kids, he spreads his arms out (in sort of a typical Tigger pose). I think Jerry and Jerry Jr took the spread arms to be an 'invitation' to make more room so Jerry Jr could get into the photo. If you watch where Tigger's nose is pointed though, you can see that he doesn't know Jerry Jr was there until the arm comes up behind him. Then watch the feet - Tigger's are up against the curb. If he fell, he woudl have either fallen forward and hit the small kids - who he knew were there - or back over the fence - which he also knew was there.

There is also an early part of the video, where the dad puts the camera down (you can see the ground on the video) to get into the picture himself. You can only see the ground, so you can't see what happened, but you can hear. Sounds to me like the dad left Tigger suddenly and says "Sorry. My bad. I was messing with your head." (I can't remember the exact words - he either says "messing with" or "in").
The dad's explanation of that in the CBS news Report was that "I attempted to get in a shot with Tigger when he stuck his arm out and I figured the photographer could get a shot with two little guys," father Jerry Monaco told The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm. "At that point he started bumping into me and I apologized and I figured it was hot out and give him some space. At that point I backed off and went to take some home video of the rest of the family and, out of nowhere, he sucker-punched my son." " - that seems to me like the dad had seen Tigger put his arms out to pose and tried to get into the picture himself. Since Tigger didn't kow he was there, the dad blindsided him.
Sort of interesting that a few minutes later, Jerry Jr seems to be doing what his dad did (blindsiding Tigger and messing with his head).

And, my last point - the dad is reported as saying that the handler apologized right away and said "Tigger was not feeling well today". That doesn't ring true as something said directly to the family or as part of an apology.
It DOES make sense for the handler to have said something like that to the other people who were waiting for Tigger (Mr. Monacho said there were 2 or 3 other people waiting). The other guests had been waiting for Tigger, were expecting to see Tigger and then suddenly, Tigger left (after those kids had seen Tigger's arm hit Jerry Jr and seen Jerry Jr punch Tigger. The performer said in his police report that he had gone off after the incident to re-adjust his costume head. It makes perfect sense for the handler to explain that by saying to the other people that Tigger was not feeling well.