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Alec Baldwin reportedly punched a photographer from the Daily News earlier this week. The photographer filed an assault complaint with the NYPD, claiming that Baldwin punched him in the face on Tuesday outside of the city’s Marriage License Bureau. The photographer, Marcus Santos, shot pictures of Baldwin outside the Worth St. office after Baldwin and his fiancé, Hilaria Thomas, acquired their license.
“He comes after me, starts shoving and punching me — one time, right in the chin,” said Santos. “And then he started shoving me, and pushing me. He lunged at me like raging bull.”
A witness to the attack, Goren Veljic, said, “He was like crazy, you know? There was an eruption of mad. I think something’s wrong with him.”
On Twitter, Baldwin posted the following: “A ‘photographer’ almost hit me in the face with his camera this morning.” #allpaparazzishouldbewaterboarded
Baldwin even went as far as comparing the incident to the shooting of Trayvon Martin: “I suppose if the offending paparazzi was wearing a hoodie and I shot him, it would all blow over.”
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The general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, Mickey Osterreicher, could not believe Baldwin related the incident to the killing of an unarmed team.
“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,” he said.
Baldwin was scheduled to appear as a keynote for the American Heart Association’s event at the Grand Hyatt in midtown New York on Tuesday night. He was spotted late in the day holding a white sheet up to his face after he left the Regency Hotel. Baldwin has attacked photographers in the past, in California back in 1995 and in Manhattan in 2010.
Santos was on the sidewalk with Veljic and another photographer when Baldwin went ballistic.
“He said, ‘Stay away from me, or I’ll break your f—— teeth,’” said Daily News photographer Jefferson Siegel. “Then he grabbed my camera lens, and tried to shove my camera to the ground.”
The photographers adhered to the orders barked at them by Baldwin but Santos warned Baldwin when he approached Siegel.
“I said, ‘Don’t touch him,’” said Santos. “Then he came right after me. I knew he was going to attack me. I stepped back, and he kept coming.”
In a statement released by Baldwin’s spokesman, he said he was the victim of an overly aggressive Santos. Then, on ‘The Charlie Rose Show’ on Tuesday night, Baldwin said, “I’m dumb but I’m not that dumb,” he said. “There were ten cops right there on the block.”
A spokesman for the NYPD said, “Alec Baldwin is cooperating with the investigation. Should we want him to come down, his attorney will bring him to us.”
The statement from Baldwin’s spokesman said the following: “The photographer was clearly frustrated, pushed past the bystander and assaulted Alec with his camera. There were no punches thrown, and any subsequent physical contact was simply Alec protecting himself.”
