Because the idiot came over and ripped the hat off of the child. At that point, his friend took out his cell phone and started recording. This isn’t rocket science. Watch the video.
I have about 9 times, the video starts with the guy throwing the drink, and you must assume it was at the kid sitting to the left off camera; it shows nothing of the hat until he walks away with it much less what happened before. There was no hurried, awkward fumbling of the camera, it was always smoothly held and well-aimed. Like I said, the Jimenez guy was not only a jerk, but stupid not to see the camera and take it rather than the hat. Now he's going to pay for that mistake.
Now I admit, I'm probably more prejudiced against the guy than I probably would have been had he been a Trump supporter stealing a hat off of some smarmy Hillary supporter, even so, I have to admit that:
A). There is no video evidence the kid ever owned or was wearing the hat much less the guy took it off him. We only see Jiminez walk away with it.
B). We never actually see the drink thrown in the kid's face.
I realize these may seem incredulous arguments, but I'm just trying to look at it from a defense attorney's POV. Even a news station admitted that it was highly irregular to charge the guy with "theft of person" under these circumstances.
I'M BETTING this guy gets off w/o any jail time and only a moderate slap of the wrist.
And NO, I am NOT advocating for the guy. Just sayin'.
One more case of a lot of ado (national and worldwide?) made over a really minor affair. If I were the judge, I'd order the guy to attend anger management, do community service, pay a stiff fine, and sincerely apologize to the kid.