Mel Gibson: The Hours Before the DUI!
July 31, 2006
It may have been a harmless Thursday night out at Moonshadows Restaurant for MEL GIBSON, but what started out as a social event at the local Malibu, CA, watering hole last week turned into a DUI arrest and a subsequent media maelstrom.
Now, ET is exclusively with the revelers who were with Mel just minutes before he was arrested for DUI!
"It did seem like he had one too many before he got there that night," Arizona native TODD HAUSBERGER tells ET. "His eyes were kind of bloodshot; he wasn't completely wasted or anything, but you could tell he was impaired and he should not be driving."
Todd, 29, who describes Gibson as "a real, down-to-earth guy," was having drinks with JULIE SMITH, 27, and KIMBERLY LESAK, 29, two high school friends from Louisville, KY, when they saw the 'Lethal Weapon' star unaccompanied at the restaurant bar. The two women approached him to see if he was indeed Mel Gibson, and proceeded to have a great time with the Oscar winner, who they say was only drinking "expensive water" from a bottle.
"He's an amazing actor; it was very intriguing to hang out with someone who was friendly and open and would talk to us," Kim tells ET. She says they offered to buy him a shot, but he respectfully declined. "He would not take up any offers to have any alcohol."
"If his face wasn't so recognizable, he would just seem like an average Joe," says Julie. In fact, the girls were ribbing the actor about some of his more questionable career choices, asking him when 'Bird on a Wire 4' was coming out, and "he was very jovial."
So jovial that he was happy to take pictures with anyone who wanted to pose with him. But by the time the bar was closing, the revelers realized that Gibson appeared too impaired to drive himself home.
"Most everyone around was concerned with Mel driving out of there," says Kim.
"Everybody got asked to leave politely," adds Julie. "I assumed he had a driver. Several people offered to give him a ride."
But Mel politely declined any offers for a taxi or lift home, reportedly saying, "I live just down the street."
"We figured, 'He's a big star, he's a big boy, he can take care of himself,'" says Todd. "There's nothing we could have said or done that would have changed his mind."
When news broke the next day that Gibson had been pulled over and arrested for a DUI, along with reports that he had tried to flee the scene and made anti-Semitic remarks, the Moonshadows revelers were startled by the news.
"I was shocked by [the reports of] his behavior," says Kim. "He showed no sign of any outrageous behavior whatsoever; very friendly, very down-to-earth. I don't know what provoked him to act so outrageous."
"Considering how he was with us, I was flabbergasted," says Julie. "I'm surprised. He was sweet as apple pie the whole time."
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