Alec Baldwin arrested in NY, charged with assault
NEW YORK — Actor Alec Baldwin was arrested Friday for suckerpunching another man in a fight over a Greenwich Village parking spot.
The “Hunt for Red October” star was trying to park a black Cadillac Escalade in a spot on E. 10th Street near Fifth Avenue when Wojciech Cieszkowski, 49, pulled into the space about 1:30 p.m., sources with knowledge of the case said.
One of Baldwin’s family members was trying to hold the spot for the actor when Cieszkowski slipped his black Saab station wagon into the space, sources said.
The two men argued and when the victim went to a pay the parking meter, Baldwin ran up and struck him, authorities said.
Baldwin was charged with assault, harassment and physical contact.
He left the 6th Precinct stationhouse several hours later, brushing by reporters, and said nothing as he arrived home. Baldwin later tweeted a denial. “Normally, I would not comment on something as egregiously misstated as today’s story,” Baldwin wrote. “However, the assertion that I punched anyone over a parking spot is false. I wanted to go on the record stating as much. I realize that it has become a sport to tag people w as many negative charges and defaming allegations as possible for the purposes of click bait entertainment. Fortunately, no matter how reverberating the echos, it doesn’t make the statements true.”
President Donald Trump, whom Baldwin impersonates on “Saturday Night Live,” even weighed in on the arrest.
“I wish him luck,” Trump said at campaign rally in Huntington, W.Va.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, was a little less reserved.
“Is anyone shocked at this piece of garbage anymore?” Trump Jr. tweeted. “As if the phone calls to his daughter weren’t bad enough. He’s a lib so he gets chance after chance to be decent but always fails!”
To top it off, Baldwin and Cieszkowski received parking summonses for not paying the meter.
Police have surveillance video of the incident from a nearby building, authorities said.
“They’re out there saying he punched him in the face — I don’t know if that’s necessarily the case,” said a police spokesman. “The victim is just saying, ‘He hit me, he hit me.’ ”
Cieszkowski went to a hospital complaining of physical pain. He had redness on his neck, the spokesman said.