Nick Lachey was ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings – along with anger management classes – a year after being charged with assault and battery on a member of the paparazzi.
The incident occurred in March 2022 after Lachey was accused of assaulting photographer Jody Santos.
The punishment mentioned above is held for one year.
Going back more than a year, the footage from last March features Lachey walking up to Santos’ car… trying to grab his phone… and cursing at him after realizing he was taking a photo of him and his wife, Vanessa Lachey.
The Daily Mail reported at the time that he was charged with assault and battery.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Los Angeles District Attorney explained:
“Mr. Lachey has not been charged with assault and battery. But he participated in the LADA Prefiling Redirect program established in 2017.
“As part of the condition, he must attend anger management classes and attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Successful completion of the Prefiling Diversion Program will not result in criminal charges.
said Santos today:
“In all my years of photographing celebrities, no one has ever tried to hit me.
“I’m just relieved I rolled my window as fast as I did, otherwise he would have beaten me. No doubt…
“I’ve taken her photo many times and never had a problem with it, but this time was different.”
Santos also claimed last year that Lachey called her a “psy fker mom,” put his arm through my car window, and tried to grab my cell phone, adding that she “could smell alcohol on his breath.”
“What he did was wrong,” he added.
“Putting my fist through the car window when I was just taking photos of people. They should thank me for the free publicity.
“I mean, really. Talk about a huge ego.”
Santos also said he “heard Vanessa say, ‘Open, open the door,’ and then she walked towards my car aggressively.”
After rolling her car window, the photographer said that Nick punched the window so hard “I thought he was going to break his arm.”
He emphasized: I’m surprised he didn’t break the window.
For his part, Lachey tweeted about the incident a day after it happened.
“Last night, after a nice dinner with my husband and a dear friend, the paparazzi harassed us on our way back to the hotel,” he wrote on March 27, 2022.
“I clearly overreacted. I’ve been in this game long enough to know that sad antics are part of the deal. Stupid me. Done.”