A Manhattan judge today quickly cleared former WPIX-Channel 11 news reporter Vince DeMentri of all charges in a bogus, misdemeanor chauffeur-slap case — and now the reporter says all he wants is his old job back.
“Nobody believed me,” DeMentri said of his months of insisting that he’d never slapped the chauffeur for the Bahamian ambassador in the face during a heated argument over a Midtown parking spot last May.
“Nobody believed me. Everybody believed him,” he said of the driver, Hurley Senanayake, 55.
“I was the bad boy. I was the villain. I was the guy who freaked out. I was the guy who went nuts. Well guess what? I’m not the villain. I’m the victim. And you know what? I need a job.”
Senanayake had taken the stand last week to insist that DeMentri, 47, had slurred him with the “N-word” during the altercation.
When defense lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman confronted him for apparently inventing the damaging “N-word” slur on the witness stand, Senanayake insisted he’d told cops and prosecutors all along about the slur — only to be proven a liar when the arresting officer and the lead prosecutor conceded he’d never done so.
Senanayake’s claims that DeMentri had slapped him through the chauffeur’s open driver’s-side window were disproven by an objective eyewitness — a restauranteur who testified he saw no slap, and that Senanayake’s window was only open by about one-quarter.
Under cross examination earlier today, Senanayake claimed he couldn’t remember if he’d hired a lawyer to sue DeMentri, and couldn’t remember if he’d told a physical therapist that the pain from the face slap was a ten-out-of-ten — meaning the highest intensity possible.
Trouble was, both the intent to file suit and the ‘ten-out-of-ten’ pain claim had been documented — as had Senanayake’s tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt and his family’s foreclosures on two homes in recent years.
Senanayake also admitted he had claimed on a federal income tax form that he earned no income whatsoever in 2008 — even though he was still driving for the Bahamian embassy.