PARIS – The news was known during the early hours of this Friday. The Francebleu site, belonging to French public radio, highlighted that a Parisian taxi driver presented a complaint against Francisco Cerúndolo. In the statement made to the police, the Argentine player would have slapped him after the driver refused to let him get into the taxi along with four other friends due to lack of space in the car. This complaint was made by a 61-year-old taxi driver at the 15th District police station in Paris, an area bordering the Seine River and located a few blocks from Roland Garros. The focus of the presentation to the police was “deliberate violence during a meeting while intoxicated”.
The event would have happened at dawn on Thursday, around 1:45, in Grenelle, when the taxi was approached by the group of young people, to which the driver stated that he could not take them all. “I realized that they had been drinking,” said the taxi driver in his complaint, and even assured that the tennis player would have offered to pay more, before “becoming aggressive.” Always according to the statement, there would have started an argument, which continued with the player’s alleged aggression, and then received an accidental elbow in the middle of the separation. Always according to Francebleu, minutes after the complaint was filed, the police went to the hotel where Cerúndolo was staying, and would have delayed the player and another person.
However, from the tennis player’s environment they described what happened as “a lie”. Mariano Ink, manager of number 44 in the ranking, told THE NATION that “the taxi driver made a complaint that, through the security cameras, was confirmed to be a lie. It is true that the police intervened, and that they went to a police station to clarify everything. But thanks to the cameras everything became clear, even the police ended up apologizing to him.” The case was closed immediately due to lack of evidence, the police understood that the situation did not go beyond an argument without physical aggression, and the player was released immediately. At French noon this Friday, he was about to board the plane back to Buenos Aires.
According to other close sources, Cerúndolo had to remain at the police station for several hours, without being able to communicate with his family, which aroused the concern of his relatives, and he was only able to go out to clarify what happened after spending a moment of tension: “It was just a holiday, there was no one in the sectional and the commissioner arrived later than a normal day, that’s why the delay “.
Before traveling to Argentina, Cerúndolo issued a statement on the networks in which he stated: “Hello everyone, I wanted to tell you that everything that is being mentioned on the networks is false. I was with relatives at night asking for a taxi, and I asked him if he would do us a favor and make us get 5 people up. The taxi driver told me yes, to wait for him 2 minutes that he was going to do something and he would come back. When he came back and saw that we spoke another language, he kind of got scared and told us that in the end five [podían subir]We asked him why, he got nervous and started yelling at us, treating us badly and said he was going to call the police”.
“We did not give it importance, we went to the hotel to ask for another taxi, and the minute the police appeared, and questioned me and one of my relatives inside the hotel, in the lobby, because the taxi driver allegedly said that we had assaulted him. . They took us to the police station and after a few hours, because it was a holiday and no one was there yet, after corroborating the fact through the security cameras, they realized that nothing had happened. They apologized to us because they couldn’t believe that they had arrested us for this. I’m perfect, it was just a bad time. Thank you all for asking and for worrying, ”Cerúndolo expanded on his social networks.
Cerúndolo, 23, had a discreet performance in the French Open, in which he was quickly eliminated in the first round by the British Daniel Evans in straight sets, and also said goodbye in his debut in the doubles tournament, where he was accompanied by Federico Coria and fell against the Uruguayan Ariel Behar and the Ecuadorian Gonzalo Escobar, in a match played on Wednesday afternoon, before the incident.
