Cobra Kai star Alicia Hannah-Kim accused her co-star Martin Kove of simple assault on Sunday, June 22nd at Summer Con in Washington. A police report about the incident was obtained by PEOPLE, and in it, Hannah-Kim accuses Kove of biting her on the upper arm painfully, without provocation. The two appeared often together in Cobra Kai Season 5 and Season 6, where Hannah-Kim played the new character Kim Da-Eun and Kove reprised his Karate Kid role as John Kreese. Kove claimed that he had bitten Hannah-Kim as a joke, and Hannah-Kim ultimately decided not to press charges. However, Kove was removed from the convention at the behest of a Cobra Kai producer.
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Kove declined to write a voluntary statement about his own account of this incident for the police report, so only the descriptions of Hannah-Kim, her husband Sebastian Roche, and the officer involved were included. They say that Hannah-Kim tapped Kove on the shoulder to greet him when she arrived at the Cobra Kai booth on Sunday. Without warning, the 78-year-old actor “suddenly grabbed her arm and bit her upper arm so hard it nearly drew blood, and she yelled out in pain.”
“Once Martin Kove finished biting her arm, he grabbed her arm again and began kissing it where he had bit her,” the report goes on. It says that Roche then confronted Kove about the attack, and Kove “exploded on them,” insisting “he did not do anything wrong.” Hannah-Kim then sought out the on-site police officer at the con, who confirmed that she “had a very noticeable bite mark on her arm that was already turning blue and bruising.”
When confronted by the police, Kove “admitted to biting” Hannah-Kim, but “said he did it out of jest.” He pointed out that they had worked on a lot of staged combat scenes together on Cobra Kai, and claimed “they play fight all the time on the set,” so “he did not think it was a big deal.”
While Hannah-Kim did not want to press charges on this incident, she privately asked police for official documentation of their report “in case this continues.” Meanwhile, Kove thanked the police officer but “declined” to give a written statement, reiterating that “he was just messing around.” It was a Cobra Kai producer who requested that Kove and his son be “escorted out of Summer Con.”
Neither Kove nor Hannah-Kim have commented publicly on this incident outside of the police report, and there are no other reports of issues between the actors in real life. Kove does not have a history of violent encounters or crime.
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