EGN NEWS DESK
On Tuesday afternoon in Sag Harbor, Janice Yu of WABC-TV was sitting within the passenger seat of a Nissan information van, consuming from a bag of Smart Food popcorn. It was as shut as she would come to attending to a kernel of reports.
“We don’t even know who he was with,” she mentioned, referring to the singer and actor Justin Timberlake, who had been arrested by a Sag Harbor police officer shortly after midnight on Tuesday and charged with driving whereas intoxicated.
Ms. Yu, a reporter for ABC7 Eyewitness News in New York, was certainly one of many journalists parked alongside Main Street close to the American Hotel, a Nineteenth-century inn the place waiters serve Gardiner’s Bay littleneck clams and Long Island duckling confit to boomer inventory sultans. It was additionally the place Mr. Timberlake had been partying with associates the evening earlier than.
Now it was a muggy and sunny day on the leafy road of this quaint-by-Hamptons-standards onetime whaling village, lined by outlets that promote every little thing from $30 Havaianas flip-flops to $4,600 swivel chairs by Charlotte Perriand. People in Lululemon activewear strolled by, clutching açaí bowls and iced drinks.
Ms. Yu, who joined the native information group in 2022 after a stint at Fox5 in Atlanta, had on a turquoise and inexperienced J. Crew costume. John Sprei, her discipline producer, was seated behind her within the van, carrying shorts and a T-shirt.
They had scored a replica of the arrest report that was filed in Sag Harbor Village Justice Court earlier that day — however so had the journalists in different automobiles lining the block, a convoy that included information vehicles and vans from CBS, NBC, PIX11, Entertainment Tonight, The Associated Press and CNN.
The police report said that Mr. Timberlake was driving a grey 2025 BMW after spending a while on the American Hotel. It additionally mentioned that he hadn’t made it quite a lot of blocks earlier than he drove by means of a cease signal on the nook of Madison Street and Jermain, a tree-lined block the place the homes don’t appear like mansions.
He refused to take a breath check 3 times. “I had one martini and adopted my associates residence,” he informed the arresting officer, based on the report. Mr. Timberlake “carried out poorly” in varied discipline sobriety exams, the report mentioned.
He was arrested and brought to the police station, proper behind the American Hotel, on Division Street. There, he handed over his marriage ceremony ring, his cellphone, his baseball cap, his watch, his pockets, a vape pen, and inexperienced and blue papers, the type used for rolling marijuana, based on the police report. (In 2011, the singer informed Playboy that he appreciated hashish as a result of it helps him to “cease pondering.”)
After dawn, quite a few information crews descended on Sag Harbor. At 9:30 a.m., cameras captured Mr. Timberlake when he left the station in handcuffs, sure for Sag Harbor Village Justice Court on Main Street, lower than 500 toes from the American Hotel.
He enlisted Edward D. Burke Jr., a former Suffolk County prosecutor who has arrange store in a small workplace throughout from the American Hotel and made himself into the Hamptons’ go-to felony protection lawyer. Mr. Timberlake, who’s scheduled to play two reveals at Madison Square Garden subsequent week, pleaded not responsible to driving whereas intoxicated. A courtroom date has been set for July 26.
As Ms. Yu filmed her final section for the day, a CNN reporter stood outdoors the police station, which had closed at 4 p.m.
“I want the mug shot,” he yelled out to an officer in a close-by patrol automotive.
“You obtained to name media relations,” the officer yelled again.
Although the digicam crews gave the American Hotel the looks of against the law scene, all of its outside tables had been occupied.
“It’s not bothersome,” mentioned Theresa D’Andria, a Southampton resident who was there slurping up oysters together with her husband. “The climate’s nice.”
A couple of tables away, Stuart Levine, the previous chief government of Dale Carnegie & Associates, break up $45 crab truffles together with his spouse, Harriet Levine.
“You gained’t be getting your Pulitzer Prize for this,” he mentioned to a reporter.
He added that he didn’t need to sound self-righteous (actually, he didn’t) however he felt that the extent of reports protection appeared a little bit excessive, on condition that Mr. Timberlake had not gotten into an accident.
“It’s like a occurring,” he mentioned.
Walking down the road, Vanessa Gordon, a Sag Harbor resident, approached the WABC-TV information van together with her 6-year-old son, Ben Gordon. He was dressed within the fight-wear he had worn for his jujitsu class at Epic Martial Arts on Main Street.
Ms. Gordon requested Mr. Sprei and Ms. Yu if her son may maintain the microphone and faux to ship a information dispatch. Mr. Sprei informed him to return on up, so he did.
Andrew and Lauren Finkelstein, mother and father to certainly one of Ben’s jujitsu buddies, approached quickly after and requested if their son Max may be a part of within the enjoyable.
“We ought to cost admission,” Mr. Sprei mentioned.
As Max Finkelstein, 6, clutched the mic, his father requested him what he needed to report on. He didn’t appear to have a solution, so his father gave him a headline, impressed by certainly one of Mr. Timberlake’s hits.
“Cry me a river!” Mr. Finkelstein known as out.
