Alan Ritchson opened up in detail about the confrontation that turned him into an internet sensation for a weekend, walking through exactly what happened on that motorcycle ride with his sons and why he believes the footage sold to TMZ was deliberately edited to make him look like the aggressor.
Ritchson explained he had just received a custom-built bike that was “exceptionally loud” and that he never left first gear while riding with his kids through the neighborhood that day. He said he had never met the man involved.
“I’ve never met that guy ever in my life. Never seen him before. He lied to TMZ about us like, ‘I told him the day before, hey buddy, you should really slow down.’ None of that was true,” Ritchson said, adding that the man was not even present the only other time they had ridden up his street that day.
He described trying repeatedly to defuse the situation once the man stepped in front of his bike.
“I get myself together. He starts coming at me pretty aggressively. I push him back,” Ritchson said, adding that he smelled alc*hol and assumed the man was intoxicated.
He said he tried to leave twice, and the second time, “he shoves me off the bike… there was now there’s you know, I that’s the second time I tried to leave the neighborhood.”
Ritchson said the footage that circulated online only captured “the last 10 seconds,” none of the beginning, and was “sold to TMZ within 6 hours,” which he called “very strange.”
He credited a chest cam he had bought a year earlier, and had never used before, with protecting him legally.
“If I hadn’t had that dude, I’d probably still be in jail,” he said, explaining that police came to his home intending to arrest him. “Only they came to arrest me the cops came to arrest me that day. And they only had the tape to go off of that like thank God.”
Ritchson said he went through the ordeal essentially alone, since his wife was unreachable at a retreat where phones are confiscated.
“I had nobody to process it with. I was trying to be strong for my kids. I was terrified cuz I thought my entire career tanked,” he said, noting that studio executives called him directly about the tape.
The lasting toll, he said, was on his relationship with his sons. “My kids won’t ride with me anymore,” Ritchson said. “He robbed me of that, man… I’ve so much anger I’ve so much resentment that I just can’t quite let go of.”
