On Tuesday afternoon in Sag Harbor, Janice Yu of WABC-TV was sitting within the passenger seat of a Nissan information van, consuming from a bag of Sensible Meals popcorn. It was as shut as she would come to attending to a kernel of reports.
“We don’t even know who he was with,” she mentioned, referring to the singer and actor Justin Timberlake, who had been arrested by a Sag Harbor police officer shortly after midnight on Tuesday and charged with driving whereas intoxicated.
Ms. Yu, a reporter for ABC7 Eyewitness Information in New York, was one in all many journalists parked alongside Important Avenue close to the American Lodge, a Nineteenth-century inn the place waiters serve Gardiner’s Bay littleneck clams and Lengthy Island duckling confit to boomer inventory sultans. It was additionally the place Mr. Timberlake had been partying with pals the evening earlier than.
Now it was a muggy and sunny day on the leafy road of this quaint-by-Hamptons-standards onetime whaling village, lined by retailers that promote all the pieces from $30 Havaianas flip-flops to $4,600 swivel chairs by Charlotte Perriand. Individuals in Lululemon activewear strolled by, clutching açaí bowls and iced drinks.
Ms. Yu, who joined the native information workforce in 2022 after a stint at Fox5 in Atlanta, had on a turquoise and inexperienced J. Crew costume. John Sprei, her area producer, was seated behind her within the van, carrying shorts and a T-shirt.
They’d scored a replica of the arrest report that was filed in Sag Harbor Village Justice Court docket earlier that day — however so had the journalists in different autos lining the block, a convoy that included information vans and vans from CBS, NBC, PIX11, Leisure Tonight, The Related Press and CNN.
The police report acknowledged that Mr. Timberlake was driving a grey 2025 BMW after spending a while on the American Lodge. It additionally mentioned that he hadn’t made it various blocks earlier than he drove via a cease signal on the nook of Madison Avenue and Jermain, a tree-lined block the place the homes don’t seem like mansions.
He refused to take a breath check 3 times. “I had one martini and adopted my pals residence,” he informed the arresting officer, in accordance with the report. Mr. Timberlake “carried out poorly” in varied area sobriety checks, the report mentioned.
He was arrested and brought to the police station, proper behind the American Lodge, on Division Avenue. There, he handed over his marriage ceremony ring, his cellphone, his baseball cap, his watch, his pockets, a vape pen, and inexperienced and blue papers, the kind used for rolling marijuana, in accordance with the police report. (In 2011, the singer informed Playboy that he appreciated hashish as a result of it helps him to “cease considering.”)
After dawn, quite a lot of information crews descended on Sag Harbor. At roughly 9:30 a.m., Mr. Timberlake left the station. Cameras captured him in handcuffs after his in a single day keep. He headed towards the Sag Harbor Village Justice Court docket on Important Avenue, lower than 500 toes from the American Lodge, for his arraignment.
He had enlisted Edward D. Burke Jr., a former Suffolk County prosecutor who has arrange store in a small workplace throughout from the American Lodge and made himself into the Hamptons’ go-to prison protection lawyer. Mr. Timberlake, who’s scheduled to play two reveals at Madison Sq. Backyard subsequent week, pleaded not responsible to driving whereas intoxicated. A courtroom date has been set for July 26.
As Ms. Yu filmed her final phase for the day, a CNN reporter stood exterior the police station, which had closed at 4 p.m.
“I would like the mug shot,” he yelled out to an officer in a close-by patrol automobile.
“You bought to name media relations,” the officer yelled again.
Though the digicam crews gave the American Lodge the looks of against the law scene, all of its outside tables had been occupied.
“It’s not bothersome,” mentioned Theresa D’Andria, a Southampton resident who was there slurping up oysters along with her husband. “The climate’s nice.”
A couple of tables away, Stuart Levine, the previous chief government of Dale Carnegie & Associates, cut up $45 crab muffins together with his spouse, Harriet Levine.
“You gained’t be getting your Pulitzer Prize for this,” he mentioned to a reporter.
He added that he didn’t wish to sound self-righteous (in reality, he didn’t) however he felt that the extent of reports protection appeared a little bit excessive, provided that Mr. Timberlake had not gotten into an accident.
“It’s like a taking place,” he mentioned.
Strolling down the road, Vanessa Gordon, a Sag Harbor resident, approached the WABC-TV information van along with her 6-year-old son, Ben Gordon. He was dressed within the fight-wear he had worn for his jujitsu class at Epic Martial Arts on Important Avenue.
Ms. Gordon requested Mr. Sprei and Ms. Yu if her son may maintain the microphone and fake to ship a information dispatch. Mr. Sprei informed him to return on up, so he did.
Andrew and Lauren Finkelstein, mother and father to one in all Ben’s jujitsu buddies, approached quickly after and requested if their son Max may be part of within the enjoyable.
“We should always cost admission,” Mr. Sprei mentioned.
As Max Finkelstein, 6, clutched the mic, his father requested him what he wished to report on. He didn’t appear to have a solution, so his father gave him a headline, impressed by one in all Mr. Timberlake’s hits.
“Cry me a river!” Mr. Finkelstein referred to as out.
