On Thursday, we noted that Miami Heat All-Star forward LeBron James' mother, Gloria James, had run afoul of the law in Miami, getting arrested after a late-night confrontation with a valet.
In a video posted on TMZ.com, the valet, Sorel Rockefeller, gives his side of the story, which matches up very cleanly with the police report on the incident.
In the interview, Rockefeller says he was cursed at and slapped "very hard" by James, actions that made him feel "very, very humiliated." Here's a transcript of his comments.
"She said a bad word to me, I don't want to say the bad word. She said like, 'Can you shut up?' That's about what she said to me.
"She slapped me in my face. She stand like that and she slapped me in my face and when she finished slapping me she fell down on the floor.
"When it happened, they have other guys at valet parking like me, they come up to me and hold me and said go in the cafeteria, relax, enjoy some water. They told me don't talk to her."Rockefeller explained that James was upset because he asked her to wait to retrieve her car after he had waited for roughly 30 minutes for her to show up.
"The reason why she was upset was I brought her car, for like 30 minutes the car was waiting, and she was talking to two other ladies, and I keep calling, 'Ma'am your car is ready for like 30 minutes. Can you come to get your car because your car cannot stay more than 30 minutes in the lot? And she said, 'I pay 20 dollars for my car, my car is supposed to stay over there.'
"My supervisor told me to go around. I go around like twice. When I came, my supervisor told me to park the car. I dropped the key. When I dropped the key she come to me and said, 'Can I have my keys?' I said "Can you wait ma'am, I've been waiting for you for thirty minutes?" She said, "F**** to me and she slapped me in my face."He then repeated that he was slapped "very hard" multiple times and explained how the slapping made him feel: "I feel very bad. America is a country and people cannot slap you. Since I was born nobody has slapped me. That was the first time. I was very mad."
Rockefeller also stated, unequivocally, that James was drunk during the incident.
