I was punched by a random man at a bar, then the bar did nothing when it happened, and now they’ve deleted the footage. Can I take legal action?

(Location: North Carolina) Hi everyone, I (21F) am looking for some legal advice about something that happened to me a little over a week ago. My friends and I are all leaving our college town after graduation and wanted to go out one last time before everyone left. We went to our normal bar that we typically go to when
we go out because we’ve never had any issues there. I only had one drink because I was driving us that night. They had a live band playing, and while the bar was crowded, the area near the stage wasn’t super packed. One of my friends and I walked up to the stage and ended up in the front row. We didn’t have to fight our way to the front at all.

The band that was playing was playing multiple different genres, but then they started playing a Creed song. I knew it was Creed but honestly, I don’t really listen to them so I didn’t know the lyrics. My friend and I were dancing, but we weren’t taking up much space at all. I felt something on my shoulder that I thought was just someone bumping into me really hard because that happens pretty often at bars. Then it happened again about 3-4 more times and it was hard enough that I stumbled forward and had to regain my balance.

When I turned around there was a man who was easily a foot taller than me who was standing behind me with his fist raised. He yelled at me, saying things like “You don’t know shit” (which I’m assuming is because I didn’t know the lyrics but it’s also not like I was pretending to). I’ve never met this man before in my life, we’ve never had a conversation and I’ve never seen him. I’m super freaked out so I don’t even say anything and just leave to go find security.

Security ended up being no help. I told them what happened as well as what the guy looked like/was wearing and they walked over to the area, left without saying anything to the guy, came back and told me they couldn’t do anything because they didn’t see it happen. I was pretty upset and physically hurt at this point so I was crying. I ended up getting some ice in a cup from the bar to put on my shoulder.

My friends and I decided to leave and on the way out one of them tried to talk to the bouncer about what happened and all he said was “that’s tough”. Long story short after that I filed a police report with some officers who were standing about a block away from the bar and then I went home.

The next morning I woke up with a huge bruise on my shoulder. My arm was super stiff and I ended up having to ice it nearly all day and take some Tylenol a few times. After a few days, I called the number on the card one of the officers gave me to ask for an update. He told me the bar was being really weird about giving over their CCTV footage but he would let me know what happened. To sum up the next week, I hadn’t heard anything and called back tonight.

Tonight when I spoke to the officer he told me the bar staff said they weren’t going to give him the footage but that he would try to talk to the owner. I had made a facebook post in a group meant for girls at my college about what happened, mainly to see if anyone had seen the guy and could help ID him, and some girls said they knew the owner and when they asked him he said he would look into it, and then other girls told me about similar experiences they’ve had with the bar not handling violent situations. I asked the officer what would happen if the bar refused the give the footage and he said that at that point the case would be turned over to a detective and they’d have to try to get a court order to subpoena the footage. I also asked if he knew why the bar was being so resistant with the camera footage and he said in the past the bar has gotten in trouble for underage drinking and drugs, so he’s thinking that something like that would be on the video. He told me that he told the bar if he saw anything like that on the camera footage, they wouldn’t go after it because they just wanted to see the assault.

I ended up getting a call back later and the officer told me the general manager refused to show him the footage. He said the GM said he reviewed the footage and didn’t see the assault happen, so they went ahead and deleted all of the footage because it normally deletes after 5 days anyways. Now I have practically no chance of finding the guy who did this.

Another thing to note is that the bar has a personal photographer who takes pictures throughout the night and uploads it into google drive folder a few days later for everyone to see. I looked at the folder and they have pictures that make a circle around where I was standing at the exact time of the assault, but no pictures of me or the guy who punched me.

I just don’t understand why the bar was so resistant with this and ended up protecting a violent man. I knew the time the assault happened (within a 10 minute span) and there’s a camera pointing directly at the corner I was standing it.

I feel like the bar was negligent in this situation, first by not handling the situation in the moment when it was first reported to them, then by making the officer wait over a week for an answer (waiting until the footage would delete), then deleting the footage.

The only proof I have of what happened is some snapchats I took that night explaining what happened, the police report, a picture of the bruise, and the facebook post. Is there any sort of legal action I can take? My friend didn’t see it happen unfortunately.

Not to speculate, but it has me really suspicious that the bar knew the guy if they saw him and didn’t do anything. I just don’t have proof of that and it’s just a theory.