By Stone Martindale Feb 5, 2007, 17:07 GMT
Ryan O'Neal was arrested this weekend and booked at Calabasas' Lost Hills Sheriffs Station, the place where Mel was processed too. TMZ reports new details in the assault case.
O'Neal claims his son Griffin instigated the incident that led to Ryan's being arrested on suspicion of assault early Saturday morning. In a statement to TMZ issued by O'Neal's rep, Ryan accuses Griffin of "wildly swinging a fireplace poker" at him, an action that allegedly caused an injury to Griffin's pregnant girlfriend.
The Los Angeles Times also reported a statement made by O'Neal that charges his son grazed him "four or five times" with the fireplace poker and that when he ducked to avoid the swinging weapon, Griffin "hit his own girlfriend in the head." O'Neal adds that he got "nervous" because of the woman's pregnancy.
"I fled to my room," he says to the LAT, "and I got my gun." When Griffin pursued him anew, says Ryan, he fired his gun "into the banister" which scared Griffin into fleeing.
Ryan O'Neal's publicist Neil Hassman told TMZ this morning that Ryan is "back at work" on Fox networks "Bones" today and is "extremely sad and upset that this happened.
Ryan was acting from a purely defensive posture, but that doesn't change the fact that he and his son had a terrible falling out."
TMZ reports the volatile O'Neal timelines, including in 1983, when Ryan knocked out two of Griffin's teeth in a fight. Police were called but no charges filed.
Griffin O'Neal was found guilty of reckless boating for his part in the death of Gian-Carlo Coppola, the son of Francis Ford Coppola.
He also pleaded no contest to drunk driving in 1989 and no contest in 1992 to charges that he shot at his then-estranged girlfriend's empty car.
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