Man afraid of Tasmanian Devil says father-in-law of terrorized him with bushy toupee
This family squabble is totally Looney Tunes.
A 36-year-old Staten Island man who claims to have had a lifelong phobia of the Tasmanian Devil cartoon is accusing his wealthy father-in-law of making his life hell by menacing him with a bushy toupee that looks like the manic children’s character.
The situation has gotten so bad, supermarket mogul Yunes Doleh, 62, was arrested in November on felony charges for violating a restraining order by waving his “Devil” hairpiece at son-in-law, Mazen Dayem, during a funeral.
“He walked in as I was already there,” Dayem told The Post. “He removed his wig, made hand gestures. It’s just a very large fear of mine, his damn wig. Him and his hair reminds me of the Tasmanian Devil hair. I truly and genuinely have a large fear of wigs now. It’s a genuine fear. I have nightmares.”
Dayem says he’s had a debilitating fear of the wild Warner Bros. character for as long as he can remember.
“It always made me very anxious,” he said.
Court papers say the situation — which has been going on at least since 2013 — came to a head at the funeral in Brooklyn last month, when Doleh “stood in [Dayem’s] direct line of sight and proceeded to grimace, snarl, gurn and gesticulate, which was made all the more menacing by the forward rake of [the father-in-law’s] toupee.”
Dayem’s attorney, Robert Garson, confirmed his client’s unusual phobia by comparing the hairpiece to an actual animal.
“Mazen is very scared of this guy who looks like he has a rabid badger on his head. It troubles him greatly,” Garson said.
Doleh faces charges of criminal contempt and aggravated harassment for the Nov. 5 incident. Two months earlier, Dayem got a restraining order following a fracas at a Staten Island eatery in which Doleh allegedly kicked Dayem’s SUV.
Doleh was charged with criminal mischief in Staten Island County court.
He then sued his son-in-law for defamation after photos of his arrest from the parking-lot incident surfaced on social media — charges Garson called baseless.
“It’s a family dispute,” Doleh’s attorney, Matthew Santamauro, said. “I believe at the end of the day, the criminal cases will be dismissed and my client [will be shown to have done] nothing wrong.”
