NBA All-Star Charles Barkley never backs down. And he never will, the Houston Rockets forward said, offering no apologies about wrestling a man from a police officer's grasp early Sunday and hurling him through a plate-glass window at Phineas Phogg's in Church Street Station.
" What they said happened, happened," Barkley said afterward of police and witness accounts. "What he did was inappropriate. I'm going to defend myself. Let there be no debate. "
The ruckus at the bar erupted about 2 a.m., when Barkley chased a man witnesses say threw a glass at Karen Carrington of Deltona, who was sitting at Barkley's table. Barkley heaved the man, Jorge Lugo, through a plate-glass window and was arrested.
Lugo, 20, an Orlando construction laborer, was released from Orlando Regional Medical Center after treatment for minor cuts to his upper right arm.
Barkley was charged with aggravated battery, a felony, and resisting arrest without violence. He walked out of the Orange County Jail about 7:15 a.m. Sunday on $6,000 bail after Rockets guard Clyde Drexler, who was with Barkley at the downtown Orlando nightspot, bailed him out.
" It's very unfortunate that it happened," Drexler said. "He certainly was provoked. "