Released from prison a couple of days early to avoid a likely media circus, disgraced pro football star O.J. Simpson made his first public statement as a paroled man Sunday.
Just hours after his nine-year robbery sentence ended, the New York Post published a short video of Simpson’s at-times terse interaction with reporters — especially one who asked him what it felt like to be out of prison.
“I’m in a car for the last five hours, so how do I know how it feels to be out?” he asked.
The vehicle he had been riding in when reporters caught up with him early Sunday morning in Amargosa Valley, Nevada, was a white SUV.
One of the most iconic features of the high-profile trial against Simpson for the 1994 murder of his ex-wife and her acquaintance was another white SUV. That Ford Bronco was driven by his close friend Al Cowlings during a low-speed chase that ended in Simpson’s arrest.
Though he was acquitted in the resulting trial, Simpson still faced a multimillon-dollar civil judgment won by the family of Ron Goldman, who was murdered along with Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown. He didn’t remain a free man for too long, either.
He spent nine years in a Nevada prison for a 2007 armed robbery and, upon his recent release, he did not seem anxious to open up about his time behind bars. When reporters first approached Simpson, he reacted abruptly and in apparent surprise by their presence.
“Y’all stalking me?” he asked with a laugh.
“None of your business,” Simpson later replied when a man filming the interaction asked how he had been.
He did offer a little more insight, insisting “nothing has changed” in his life over the past nine years.
“I’ve been in Nowhere, U.S.A., for the last nine years doing nothing,” Simpson said. “Nothing has changed in my life. What do you guys, I mean, what do you expect?”
From there, he made it clear he wanted to end the impromptu interview.
“Please, can I have a break here?” he asked before the vehicle drove off and he left the reporters with a thumbs up.
His first on-camera comments outside of prison were brief, but as CrimeOnline reported, Simpson is reportedly shopping a number of networks for a deal worth as much as $5 million for his exclusive first interview.
[Featured image: Screenshot/New York Post]
