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ORLANDO, Fla. – An Army veteran suffered a facial fracture after he was attacked by four men inside a downtown Orlando<\/a> smoke shop Sunday night, according to police.<\/p>\n Markus Torres, who manages the store on Orange Ave., said the confrontation began when he asked a group of customers to leave after they became rowdy.<\/p>\n The backstory:<\/p>\n Four suspects attacked a smoke shop manager in downtown Orlando Sunday night, according to Orlando police.\u00a0<\/p>\n The manager, Army veteran Markus Torres, said the group got too rowdy inside the store. He said they were “play wrestling,” so he asked them to leave.\u00a0<\/p>\n CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX LOCAL APP<\/a><\/p>\n Torres said he was punched and kicked but was able to save himself from further injury by remembering his Army training.\u00a0<\/p>\n Torres said he had one suspect in a chokehold before they ran off.\u00a0<\/p>\n Torres got checked out at Orlando Regional Medical Center. Doctors told him he had a facial fracture, but he was lucky he did not have a brain bleed or a concussion.\u00a0<\/p>\n An Army veteran suffered a facial fracture after he was attacked by four men inside a downtown Orlando smoke shop Sunday night, according to police. <\/p>\n Torres had two black eyes and several scrapes and bruises when he met with the FOX 35 News crew Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n An Army veteran suffered a facial fracture after he was attacked by four men inside a downtown Orlando smoke shop Sunday night, according to police. <\/p>\n An Army veteran suffered a facial fracture after he was attacked by four men inside a downtown Orlando smoke shop Sunday night, according to police. <\/p>\n Officers arrested Edwin Rodriguez the same night. Rodriguez was booked into the Orange County Jail early Monday morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rodriguez is charged with aggravated battery.\u00a0<\/p>\n Two other men are possible suspects while the fourth suspect has not been identified, according to an arrest report.\u00a0<\/p>\n What they’re saying:<\/p>\n Torres said the fight lasted a minute at most.<\/p>\n “I came around the counter to escort them out and the driver hit me and then it was on,” Torres said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Torres said he had to quickly fight back.<\/p>\n “I got the first one I can and started hitting the crap out of him as best I could,” Torres said. “Trying to fend them off and get them out of the shop. It was a lot of kicks to the face. They really couldn\u2019t get to me because I had one of their buddies in a rear-naked choke hold while I was punching him in the face, so it made it hard for them to really get in close with their hands.”<\/p>\n SIGN-UP FOR FOX 35’S BREAKING NEWS, DAILY NEWS NEWSLETTERS<\/a><\/p>\n Torres said he is ready to return to work as soon as doctors clear him.\u00a0<\/p>\n “It\u2019s not meant to be pretty. Wish it didn\u2019t happened, but I make the best of it.”<\/p>\n Torres said his military training helped him prevent further injury.<\/p>\n “I was able to walk away from it,” Torres said. “Most people, I can\u2019t say the same for them. I\u2019m just glad it was me there that day.”<\/p>\n What’s next:<\/p>\n Police have not reported making other arrests in this case.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Source: FOX 35 News reviewed the arrest report for Edwin Rodriguez. The crew also interviewed Markus Torres in person.<\/p>\n Orange County News<\/a>Orlando News<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. – An Army veteran suffered a facial fracture after he was attacked by four men inside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[630,47,115,1335,139,141,140,628],"class_list":{"0":"post-159345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-crime-publicsafety","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-orange-county","12":"tag-orlando","13":"tag-orlando-headlines","14":"tag-orlando-news","15":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/wofl-army-veteran-attacked-in-orlando13.jpg\")
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