BROOKLYN District At torney Charles Hynes is behaving as badly as the fat drunks who allegedly badgered, harassed and threatened Mike Tyson one morning in June.
The DA wants to lock up the ex-heavyweight champ, a guy with a criminal past and tattooed face, for up to a year in jail, for one stupid reason: His name is Mike Tyson.
I’ll say this only once: Free Mike Tyson.
Please, give the taxpayers of New York a break.
Like him or loathe him, as I often have, it was hard to figure out what Tyson was doing inside Brooklyn’s Criminal Court at 10:30 a.m. yesterday. Strolling around with a scowl on his face and white patent loafers on his sockless feet, Tyson sat on a wooden bench in the next-to-last row, flanked by dozens of grimy, garden-variety criminals and traffic violators awaiting arraignment.
Next to Tyson was his sister, Jackie Roe, who was with him at the Brooklyn Marriott at 5:30 a.m. on June 21, as idiot drunks Samuel Velez and Nestor Alvarez-Ramos spotted the champ. A source told me Tyson feared for her safety.
Prosecutors actually agreed that Velez called out to Tyson, “You got fists. We got guns!” and reached into his waistband.
So I repeat, what are we doing here?
Tyson’s mega-lawyer, Mel Sachs, joined in defense by Steve Brounstein, told me this sequence of events:
Tyson was standing outside the Brooklyn Marriott, after five hours sleep, waiting for a car to take him to the airport. That’s when Velez and Alvarez-Ramos, accompanied by Velez’s squeeze, Thamara Ocasio, arrived at the hotel after a night of drinking, and asked for an autograph. Tyson refused. They didn’t like it.
Tyson went inside the hotel to avoid the idiots. But they followed. An escalator leading up to the main lobby wasn’t working, so Tyson walked up, harassers in pursuit.
They cursed at him.
Tyson doubled back down on the escalator, and they followed. Then he went back up. That’s when Velez threatened him with shooting. Tyson didn’t know it, but Velez was unarmed.
A moment later, in the lobby, Alvarez-Ramos went to pick up a metal stanchion – the kind that holds velvet ropes. Comically, “he was unable to move it very far because it’s too heavy,” Sachs said.
Tyson then lashed out with his fists. Ocasio jumped on his back, but Tyson shook her off like a bug. Prosecutors contend that Tyson overreacted. What rot.
I’ve seen Velez and Alvarez-Ramos and, considering who hit them, and how badly they asked for it, they didn’t look too bad.
OK, I’ll say it again: Free Mike Tyson.