SHERIFF’S investigators want Lindsay Lohan charged with battery for last month’s skirmish with a Betty Ford Center rehabilitation technician.
A two-week investigation shows Lohan violated her probation during the altercation and details will be sent to the Los Angeles County Probation Department this week, Riverside sheriff’s Sergeant Joe Borja said in a news release.
A Beverly Hills judge has said Lohan will be jailed if she violates probation. Investigators expect to take their case to the Riverside County district attorney’s office this week for possible prosecution, Borja said.
Lohan returned to the Palm Desert drug dependency centre on December 12 after curfew and refused rehab worker Dawn Holland’s request to take a breathalyser test.
Lohan has been receiving treatment at Betty Ford, about 193km east of Los Angeles, since late September. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elden Fox, who has overseen Lohan’s probation for her three-and-a-half-year-old drunken driving case, required Lohan to remain at the rehab centre until Monday.
John Hall, spokesman for the Riverside County district attorney’s office, said his office expected to receive investigators’ findings this week. If Lohan is prosecuted in Riverside County, the Los Angeles County probation department would be notified, he said.
“The important, yet limited, investigatory role of the police to gather facts and collect evidence is well-established,” Shawn Chapman Holley, Lohan’s lawyer, said in a statement.
“The fact that the Palm Desert Police Department went outside this limited role to issue a press statement expressing its opinion about what should happen in Ms Lohan’s case is highly unusual and deeply troubling.”
The actress is due back in court February 25 in Beverly Hills for a hearing at which Fox is expected to address Lohan’s probation and the Betty Ford altercation.
Lohan was scheduled to leave rehab on Monday, but there were conflicting reports about whether the 24-year-old actress was released, the latest bout of uncertainty for her.
TMZ reported Monday that Lohan was still taking sobriety classes at the centre and would come back to Los Angeles on Tuesday, though E! insisted she departed the facility on Monday, citing Lohan’s mother, Dina, who called it “a great day”.
Lohan herself remained silent on Twitter on Tuesday. Lohan’s lawyer did not specify whether Lohan had been released. A spokesman for Betty Ford said Monday the facility does not comment on its patients.
Lohan’s father, Michael, was also mum on whether Lohan was actually leaving rehab on Monday. Whether she’s in or out, Lohan faces an uncertain career and looming legal issues. For months, she’s been haunted by her inability, or unwillingness, to shake the drunken driving case that resulted in Lohan’s two separate trips to rehab and jail in 2010.
Despite the latest investigation, experts say Lohan has a good shot at recovery. Provided, of course, that she wants it, changes her party girl lifestyle and remains in continued therapy.
If a New Year’s Day message posted on her Twitter account is any indication, the Mean Girls star seems ready to do just that.
“Today is the first day of the rest of my life,” it said. “‘The future depends on what we do in the present.’ – Mahatma Gandhi… One step at a time…”
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