After allegedly lunging himself at a New York Daily News
photographer, actor Alec Baldwin is now at the nucleus of a criminal investigation in Manhattan after the paparazzo took legal action against the “30 Rock” star.
The incident took place on Tuesday, minutes after Baldwin obtained his marriage license to wed his Latina fiancée Hilaria Thomas.
Baldwin had a brief encounter with the New York Daily News photographer, Marcus Santos, who attempted to snap photos of him and Thomas together.
Santos says Baldwin was “looking mad,” and kept telling the photogs to “step back.”
To that, Santos and the rest of the lensmen stepped away from the reportedly angry actor, who then allegedly grabbed fellow photographer Jefferson Siegel.
“I said, ‘Don’t touch him,’” Santos told the New York Daily News. “I knew he was going to attack me. I stepped back, and he kept coming.”
Santos said that Baldwin was like a rabid dog.
“He comes after me, starts shoving and punching me — one time, right in the chin,” Santos continued. “Then he started shoving me, and pushing me. Then he goes the other way.”
Santos added that as Baldwin saw red, he “lunged” at him “like a raging bull.”
For his part, Baldwin says that he acted in response to aggression toward him by a photographer.
“A ‘photographer ‘almost hit me in the face with his camera this morning,” Baldwin tweeted.
“The photographer who assaulted me has (belatedly) gone to a hospital claiming injuries,” he added.
Witnesses backed up Santos’ description of the incident.
“He was like crazy, you know?” witness Goren Veljic told the New York Daily News. “There was an eruption of mad. I think something’s wrong with him.”
Baldwin expressed outrage over the incident on Twitter, saying that all paparazzi should be “waterboarded” and he also referred to the controversial Trayvon Martin case.
“I suppose if the offending paparazzi was wearing a hoodie and I shot him, it would all blow over,” Baldwin tweeted on Tuesday.
According to the New York Daily News, Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, took exception to Baldwin’s comparison of the incident with paparazzi to the Martin shooting death in Florida.
“Rather than make light of a national racial tragedy, I suggest that if you don’t want to be recognized when you go out in public, it is you who should be wearing something over your head,” said Osterreicher.
Baldwin was seen later on Tuesday wearing a white sheet over his head, shielding him from photographers.
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