AUTHOR: Jerry "Jet" Whittaker
TITLE: Poker hand sets off shooting
DATE: 2:33 AM
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BODY:
<p class="mobile-post">Actor Ryan O'Neal has defended himself following his weekend arrest for
investigation of assault, saying he grabbed a gun and fired only after his
adult son swung a fireplace poker. O'Neal told the Los Angeles Times the
incident occurred after he arrived home with a group of friends, including
his former girlfriend Farrah Fawcett. The group had been celebrating
Fawcett's 60th birthday and the fact she was still cancer-free after four
months of treatment. The 65-year-old actor said his son, Griffin, had been
visiting and grabbed a fireplace poker and started swinging it. His son
grazed him four or five times, he said. He "aimed at my head, I ducked, he
hit his own girlfriend in the head," O'Neal told the newspaper. I got a
little nervous at that point and fled to my room ... and I got my gun."
O'Neal said his son began to come up the stairs with the poker. "So I just
fired it into the banister, and that scared him and he fled," he said.
O'Neal was arrested for investigation of assault with a deadly weapon and
negligent discharge of a firearm. He was released on a $50,000 US bond.
Griffin O'Neal's pregnant girlfriend was slightly injured in the incident,
said Neil Hassman, Ryan O'Neal's manager. "I've spoken to people involved
and no one knows why it escalated like that," Hassman said yesterday. "Ryan
feels terrible about what happened." Hassman said O'Neal returned to the set
of the TV show Bones despite the actor's arm being sore.</p>
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