NXT Season1 winner Wade Barrett was arrested on Sunday, June 15, 2008 in Tampa, Florida and charged with battery of a law enforcement officer and obstructing or opposing an officer. Barrett was arrested following an incident with a female outside the Champps bar and restaurant at 2:00 A.M. He was released at 1:43 p.m. the next day.
Wrestlers from FCW said that as he was leaving the bar, he had an altercation with a female patron he didn’t know that bumped into him. When Barrett attempted to leave the place, someone came up to him and attempted to stop him from leaving. That person was a plain-clothes police officer. One version of the story notes that the police officer followed Sanders outside and shot him with a taser gun as he was attempting to leave the scene.
The female Barrett had the altercation with declined to press charges on him and allegedly told the police that she was at fault for the initial incident at the bar.
Barrett’s arrest record lists the offense as Battery on an Officer, but he apparently told wrestlers that he was simply trying to leave the scene and did not attempt to get in a physical altercation with anyone. Also, Sanders claims that he wasn’t aware that the plain-clothes person was a police officer. He said if he was aware that the person was a police officer, he wouldn’t have tried to leave the scene in the first place. Barrett said a number of witnesses can back up his story in court.
