Former NBA player and current Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson was reportedly involved in an altercation with a man at a charity event at a Sacramento high school on Wednesday night. The incident allegedly started after the man hit Johnson with a pie as part of a protest against him.
According to the Associated Press, Johnson was speaking with several people at the Seeds of HOPE dinner at Sacramento Charter High School after delivering a speech when a man later identified as 32-year-old Sean Thompson walked up to him, pulled a pie out of a bag, and hit him in the face with it. Johnson reportedly responded by defending himself, and one person who witnessed the ensuing altercation between the two men later said Johnson beat Thompson to a "bloody pulp." The mayor’s chief of staff Crystal Strait refused to elaborate on the details of the altercation following the alleged fight, but she did confirm that Johnson fought back against Thompson after he was hit with a pie.
"The mayor was assaulted," she told the AP. "I was standing right there, and I’m still pretty shaken up."
UFC fighter Urijah Faber was in attendance at the event, and he spoke with ABC10 about what he saw. While he admitted that he didn’t witness Johnson getting hit with a pie or the fight that followed, he said he saw the aftermath of the altercation that reportedly took place between the two men.
"There was another guy that was being detained who was all dirty, dressed kind of raggedy, and bloodied up at this point who was being held for the cops to come and grab him," Faber told ABC10. "I asked [Johnson] what happened and apparently the guy had come from behind and just slammed him in the face—sounds like half punch, half pie slamming in the face—and then they got into a scuffle and started rolling around on the ground and looks like that guy got the worst of it."
Johnson sent out this tweet early Thursday morning and said he was "doing fine":
Thompson was treated for a minor injury at the scene before he was arrested on a suspicion of assaulting a public official charge, which is a felony. The Sacramento Police Department released a statement about the incident along with Thompson’s mugshot on Facebook early Thursday morning:
At this point, no video of the alleged altercation between Johnson and Thompson has been released, but that could change in the coming days.
