Love Story actor defends shooting incident involving son

ACTOR Ryan O’Neal has defended himself following his arrest at the weekend for investigation of assault, saying he grabbed a gun and fired after his adult son swung a fireplace poker that hit him several times.

O’Neal told the Los Angeles Times the incident occurred after he arrived home with a group of friends, including his former girlfriend Farrah Fawcett.

The group had been celebrating Fawcett’s 60th birthday and that she was cancer-free after four months of treatment.

The 65-year-old actor said his son, Griffin, had been visiting and grabbed a fireplace poker and started swinging it. His son grazed him four or five times, he said.

He “aimed at my head, I ducked, he hit his own girlfriend in the head,” O’Neal told the newspaper.

“I got a little nervous at that point and fled to my room ... and I got my gun,” he said.

O’Neal said his son began to come up the stairs with the poker.

“So I just fired it into the banister, and that scared him and he fled,” he said.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested O’Neal for investigation of assault with a deadly weapon and negligent discharge of a firearm. He was charged and released on a $25,000 bail.

Griffin O’Neal’s pregnant girlfriend was slightly injured in the incident, treated at a hospital and released, said Neil Hassman, Ryan O’Neal’s manager.

Sheriff’s deputies and Hassman could not provide details on what caused the dispute.

“I’ve spoken to people involved and no one knows why it escalated like that,” Hassman said. “Ryan feels terrible about what happened.”

Griffin O’Neal, 42, has a history of trouble. He was given an 18-day jail sentence for not performing community service ordered by the judge who found him guilty of reckless boating in a 1986 accident that killed Gian-Carlo Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola’s son.