'Saved by the Bell' Screech Actor Dustin Diamond 'Confident' Court Will Exonerate Him From Wisconsin Bar Stabbing Charge
Dustin Diamond, the actor best known for playing Samuel "Screech" Powers on the '90s sitcom "Saved by the Bell," pleaded not guilty to charges that he stabbed a man at a Wisconsin bar in December.
On Thursday, both Dustin and his fiancée made an appearance at the Ozaukee County Circuit Court and pleaded not guilty to the charges, ABC News reports.
According to court documents, Diamond told police that "there was a group of intoxicated people being rude and insulting" at the bar that night. He also claimed he intervened after his girlfriend got into an altercation with another woman and was bleeding. Diamond said that he unintentionally stabbed the man while "chaos broke out and people were grabbing at him."
In addition, court documents show that the victim suffered from a non-life threatening, 1/2-inch wound under his armpit and heavy bleeding.
Diamond's defense attorney said the former child star "continues to believe the legal process will exonerate him and he is undaunted by the work that lies ahead," Thomas Alberti said after the hearing.
"I'm feeling very positive about the outcome [of the trial]," Alberti told People magazine. "The deeper we dig the more confident we feel about the outcome. The police and the prosecutor provided us with video and witness reports and everything we see completely supports what we said all along happened so we feel very good about it."
The 38-year-old actor was taken into custody on Dec. 26 by police in Ozaukee County for allegedly stabbing a man with a switchblade during a fight at the Grand Avenue Saloon fight in Port Washington on Christmas night. He was then charged with reckless endangerment of safety, disorderly conduct and carrying a concealed weapon.
A criminal complaint states that Diamond and his fiancée, Amanda Schutz, 27, got into a physical altercation with two men and a woman. However, Diamond told police that he accidentally stabbed one of the men while trying to defend his fiancée.
"At approximately 11:15 p.m. on Thursday, December 25, 2014, the Port Washington Police Department responded to the Grand Ave. Saloon for reports of a stabbing. Evidence quickly gathered at the scene indicates a male, age 37, had stabbed another male patron and left the bar in a white SUV with his 27-year-old girlfriend. Officers quickly located the suspect vehicle and suspects and took both into custody," read the police statement, according to Us Weekly.
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