Remember that July 15, 2008, incident where mixed-martial artist Quinton “Rampage”
Jackson crashed his Ford F-150 into several vehicles
and then led police on a high-speed chase that had him aggressively
weaving through traffic, chatting on his cell phone, accelerating away
from officers, slamming into another vehicle, running red lights,
driving over a median, terrorizing pedestrians and driving on the wrong
side of the road before he finally surrendered–face down–on Balboa Boulevard in Newport
Beach?
Mr. Jackson's wild ride resulted in a sentence today of three years probation.
]
The Weekly's September 6, 2007, cover boy could have gotten up to three years in prison, the Orange County District Attorney's office said at the time they brought three felony and two misdemeanor charges against Jackson.
But Judge Thomas Goethals today struck down Jackson's felony conviction of evading police, knocking it down to a misdemeanor reckless driving because the former UFC brawler successfully completed 200 hours of community service.
“I will never see that judge in a courtroom again,” Jackson told the Orange County Register. “I
don't see myself doing anything crazy again. . . . I want to be a positive
role model.”
That's no doubt good news to 20th Century Fox, which is scheduled to release a remake of TV's The A-Team–featuring Rampage in Mr. T's B.A.
Baracus role–in June.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.