Simpson Wrestles, Chases Armed Man

O.J. Simpson bit, wrestled and chased a man who approached him with a gun Tuesday in a golf course parking lot at Griffith Park, police said.

Simpson, who suffered a minor cut on his hand, followed the attacker in his van and called 911. But police advised him to suspend the chase, and the attacker got away, said LAPD spokesman Jason Lee.

Simpson had just finished a round of golf about 4 p.m. and was sitting in the rear passenger seat of his van, taking off his golf shoes, when the man approached, Lee said.

Simpson told the Associated Press, “I turned around and he was holding a gun on me. I said, ‘Man, why do you want to screw up your life? Take my car. You don’t want to do this.’ ”

Simpson said the assailant then replied, “O.J., I hear you carry a lot of money.”

Simpson said that he offered his money and his credit cards but that the man did not take them.

“This guy looked like a regular solid citizen,” Simpson said. “In his 40s, very clean-cut. I might have taken him for an off-duty policeman.”

Simpson said he warned the man that others would see him aiming his gun, but the man refused to leave.

“He stepped toward me and we wrestled for the gun,” Simpson said. “I bit his hand so he would let go of the gun.”

Simpson said he cut his hand on the barrel of the gun.

The attacker, Lee said, “fled to his vehicle, parked two parking stalls away. He fled in a possible late model white van.”

Simpson said that although his hand was bleeding, “I got in my van and followed him.”

As the man drove off, Simpson got the license number. He then drove to the Northeast Division station, gave the license number to detectives and filed a police report.

Asked if he thought the incident was an attempted carjacking, he said, “He didn’t want the car, he wanted me.”

Although nothing was taken, Lee said police are “looking at a possible attempted robbery. A suspect doesn’t pull a gun on someone unless he wants something. At this time, we don’t have any further information, but our detectives will be looking into the matter.”

Simpson was acquitted in 1994 of murdering ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman. In a 1997 civil trial, however, he was found liable for the deaths and ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages.

The golf course incident is being handled by the Robbery-Homicide Division, the same unit that investigated the murder of Simpson’s ex-wife and Goldman.

*

Associated Press contributed to this story.