Councilman Mike Whelan, right, with Congressman Chris Smith in Red Bank last September. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank Councilman Mike Whelan was involved an altercation in the Hamptons over the weekend in which he says he was attacked, redbankgreen has learned.
Whelan, 27, who serves as Red Bank’s police commissioner, said he was assaulted in a hotel men’s room by a belligerent stranger, and is confident the case against him will be dropped.
Whelan told redbankgreen that he was entering a men’s room at Gurney’s Montauk Resort & Seawater Hotel with a cousin Saturday afternoon when a man he didn’t know threw a towel at him and told him to hold it while he urinated.
Whelan said words were exchanged, and the man, who he said was “twice my size,” attacked him.
“I was pinned against a wall and being choked out, and I defended myself,” Whelan said.
His assailant “lost” the ensuing scuffle, he said.
Whelan said he was questioned at the police station afterward but said “I genuinely don’t know” if any charges were filed against him. He said no mugshot or fingerprints were taken by police.
Police told him that their investigation is still ongoing, said Whelan, who has engaged a lawyer for the matter.
Police in East Hampton, of which Montauk is a hamlet, did not immediately respond to a records request filed by redbankgreen on Wednesday. The name of the other man involved in the incident was not available.
“The situation found me,” Whelan said. “I did nothing wrong, and I’m extremely confident the investigation will show that I acted in self defense and it’ll be dismissed.”
Whelan, a Republican, is in the final year of his first three-year term on the council, and is not seeking re-election.
