A pro-skateboarder was freed Wednesday after spending five days in jail following a promise to pay back the nearly $3,000 in damage he caused during a naked rampage at a New York City hotel.
"I became something other than myself," a soft-spoken, tattooed Jereme Rogers, 26, explained with a laugh, as he left Manhattan Criminal Court. "I became something like The Hulk."
Rogers — named rookie of the year in 2005 by Skateboarding magazine and still a top competitor — was freed from Rikers Island and promised a no-jail sentence after agreeing to pay back at least half of what he owes the hotel before his next court date Jan. 31.
He had been caught on the morning of Jan. 5 rampaging nude in the hallway of the Shelburne hotel in midtown Manhattan. He pleaded guilty Wednesday to misdemeanor criminal mischief for admittedly smashing and tearing at three paintings he had yanked off the walls.
"They were nice," he said of his Rikers companions. "Not all people in jail are bad."
"I was not on angel dust, by the way," he told reporters of his wild night. "Though I was incoherent. It was a little bit of drinking and a girl that I was drinking with gave me two pills that she said were hangover pills. But they weren't."
"I don't know what they were, actually."
