By Alberto Amalfi | Friday, May 27, 2022
A Paris taxi driver filed a complaint against Francisco Cerundolo claiming the Argentinean player was drunk and assaulted him.
Police arrested Cerundolo at his hotel, brought him in for questioning, but ultimately released him.
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The 61-year-old taxi driver claims Cerundolo slapped him at about 1:45 a.m. on Thursday after the driver declined to admit Cerundolo and four friends into his cab.
Cerundolo was picked up on a complaint of "voluntary violence in a meeting in a state of drunkenness" French publication France Bleu reports.
Paris prosecutor's office closed the case for lack of CCTV cameras or witnesses though it said Cerundolo conceded there was "a scuffle."
In a Twitter post, the Miami Open semifinalist said it was a case of miscommunication.
"The taxi driver told me that I should wait for 2 minutes that he was going to do something and he came back," Cerundolo said on Twitter via google translation. "When he came back and he saw that we spoke another language, he kind of got scared and told us that in the end five of us didn't ask him because he got nervous and started yelling at us for treating us badly and said he was going to call the police.
"We did not give it any importance, we went to the hotel to ask for another taxi and the minute the police appeared, they questioned me and one of my relatives inside the hotel in the lobby because the taxi driver said that we had allegedly assaulted him. They took us to the police station and after a few hours because it was a holiday and still no one was there after corroborating the fact through the security cameras they realized that no one had happened.
"They asked us for forgiveness because they couldn't believe that they had arrested us for that. I'm perfect, it was just at the wrong time."
Photo credit: Miami Open