American Idol season 10 alum Haley Reinhart was found guilty Monday of hitting a bouncer during a fight last year at a Palatine, Illinois bar.
Judge James Karahalios called her testimony “evasive, argumentative and sometimes implausible” as he found her guilty of violating a local ordinance prohibiting battery, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Reinhart “really hauled off and punched him,” the judge said, based on surveillance video of the incident.
She denied hitting the bartender in the eye, but under questioning from the village prosecutor said she might have made contact with him accidentally but didn’t recall doing so.
Adam Sobanski is accused of putting a patron who was with Reinhart’s party that night in a headlock and choking him as bouncers were trying to escort Reinhart out of the bar.
The bouncer testified that Reinhart and her friends were being loud and unruly. When another employee on the stage pointed at Reinhart and said, “She has to go,” the bouncer began to escort her toward the exit. He said he was behind her, and she continued to turn and use profanity and made an obscene gesture. She then struck him in his midsection with her right hand and he grabbed her right wrist, he testified.
“I told her, ‘You’re not allowed to strike bouncers,’ ” he said.
He testified that he led her to the entrance vestibule and that she was able to free her wrist. She then turned and punched him in the left eye, he said.
Haley tells TMZ, “I didn’t see it going this way. The judge was wrong in his interpretation and had a cold and unfortunate perspective on the case.”
The singer was ordered to pay a $500 fine, but the conviction could be wiped from her record if she keeps her record clean for 2 years.
Haley posted this message on social media today:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfrWahJg2Wi/
