Julien Chabbott, 28, drove his expensive Ferrari over the foot of Police Officer Felix Recio. Mr. Chabbott is Stephanie Pratt's boyfriend, and he was trying to get out of getting a parking ticket for having left his expensive car in the "No Parking" zone alongside Mercer Street in Manhattan's fancy SoHo shopping district.
Stephanie Pratt, from the MTV hit show, "The Hills," is in the viral YouTube video.
A viral YouTube video allegedly shows Julien Chabbott, 28, of Chelsea, driving the front tire of his Ferrari 458 over Officer Felix Recio's foot in SoHo. The officer had tried to issue Mr. Chabbott a slew of summonses Saturday, police said, when Mr. Chabbott thought he could make a slow getaway.
In the end, Mr. Chabbott, 28, of Chelsea, was yanked out his fancy schmancy car by Officer Recio, and the police officer wrote up Mr. Chabbott for several charges including assault, vehicular assault and obstructing governmental administration, according to DNAinfo. The traffic accident took place alongside the Mercer Hotel, at 147 Mercer Street, near Prince Street, at 6:20 p.m., according to cops. The New York Post has been pushing the story with a celebrity twist : "The boneheaded boyfriend of “The Hills” star Stephanie Pratt is facing a slew of charges after driving a Ferrari over a cop’s foot as the officer writes him a parking ticket."
This is not the first time that the Mercer Hotel has been the site of privileged customers of the Mercer Hotel using Mercer Street for illegal parking.
Activists, including Suzannah B. Troy, have long cited an example of how the Mercer Hotel has questionably used the loading and unloading zone along Mercer Street for what has been alleged to be private or valet parking. The viral Ferrari YouTube video was taken by a witness and posted on YouTube under the handle Damrys7, shows the officer, who is assigned to the 1st Precinct in Lower Manhattan, writing summonses for parking in a no standing zone, and having no registration and inspection stickers.
Veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces and activists gathered outside the Mercer Hotel in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan to protest what they call unfair treatment by the hotel's management. Some veterans earn a living by working as sidewalk vendors, selling arts and crafts from tables along the historic streets of SoHo, much like the way artists do in Montmarte in Paris, and the Mercer Hotel has been waging for years a deliberate campaign to call police to harass the veteran vendors. As seen below, activists finally organized a demonstration to call attention at the injustices they face.
