Feb
OJ Simpson hits out at reports he was to blame for his girlfriend’s head injuries
OJ Simpson has hit out at reports he was to blame for his girlfriend’s head injuries after she was admitted to hospital.
The former American football star - who is currently facing robbery charges - has denied claims he was involved in Christie Prody’s injuries. Police and Simpson’s lawyers say the 32-year-old was hurt in a bad fall at a petrol station in Miami.
Simpson, who was sensationally acquitted of murdering his ex-wife 12 years ago, is said to be deeply upset at the accident which put his long time partner in intensive care. But he’s apparently fuming at tabloid reports claiming he’s to blame. “I know everyone wants to jump out and assume this had something to do with me, but it didn’t,” Simpson, 60, told the Miami Herald newspaper.
“She had an accident at a gas station, and she was hurting pretty bad, but fortunately she’s getting better. She’s sounding much better.”
After the slip, at Southwest Miami-Dade gas station on Monday, Prody was rushed to Baptist Hospital. In Wednesday’s online edition of US magazine the National Enquirer, anonymous sources claimed police weren’t convinced that she fell, believed Prody may have been beaten up and were investigating.
But Simpson’s attorney, Yale Galanter, stressed his client was not under investigation and had nothing to do with Prody’s injuries. “It’s crap,” he said.
But the magazine’s editor-in-chief David Perel says he stands by the reports. “The American public well knows by now that OJ’s ‘explanations’ always bear scrutiny,” he said in a statement.
It’s 12 years since Simpson was found not guilty of murdering ex-wife, Nicole Brown, 35, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, 25. They were found stabbed and slashed to death in front of her home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood.
The victims’ families later brought a wrongful death suit against Simpson, and in 1997 a civil court jury found him liable for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages. But Simpson, who moved to Florida with his two younger children, has done little to satisfy the judgment despite years of collection efforts by the victims’ families, who have accused him of making a mockery of the law.
Meanwhile, police have refused to reveal whether they are investigating Prody’s injuries.
Simpson is currently free on bail while he awaits trial in Las Vegas on armed robbery and kidnapping charges. He was arrested in September in connection with a confrontation at a hotel-casino where two sports-memorabilia collectors claimed they were robbed at gunpoint by Simpson and other men. Simpson’s trial is set to begin in April.
The couple met years ago in Los Angeles, where Prody was working as a waitress. After moving to Miami, the on-again, off-again relationship has been rocky.
Police have been called to break up fights between the couple five times in the past seven years but neither has ever filed charges against the other. “We’ve gone together on and off for a lot of years,” Simpson said Wednesday. “She’s a great girl.”
