John Bolaris: I Was Attacked With a Stun Gun In the Hamptons

Meteorologist John Bolaris splits his time these days between Philadelphia and Montauk, New York, running his new company, WeatherSavior.com. And it is this latter city that is the setting for the latest chapter in the John Bolaris saga. And this particular chapter ends with a cab driver allegedly using a stun gun on Bolaris.

On Saturday, July 5th, Bolaris and his fiancee, former Playboy Playmate Erica Smitheman, had dinner and drinks at The Gig Shack, which serves up crab cakes, local fish “Montacos,” and live music to the grownup Hamptons set.

After dinner, just before midnight, the pair exited the restaurant onto bustling Main Street, where they hailed a cab to take them back to the Manor, the historic Montauk hotel where they stay when in town.

But then another group of people approached the cab, and that’s when the trouble began. Even though Bolaris was the one who hailed the cab, the driver told him that he was going to take the other group instead.

Some yelling ensued.

“I said, ‘We hailed you down,'” Bolaris recounted on Thursday evening from, naturally, a cab in the Hamptons. “Then I said, ‘Listen, just take all of us.’ And he said, ‘No, get away from my cab.’ I said, ‘This is B.S.’ And then I turned my head. And he ran around the cab and punched me in the face.”

After that, says Bolaris, the driver pulled out a stun gun and used it on him.

“I got a burn on my chest,” he says. “I didn’t even see it coming.”

Shortly thereafter, police arrested the 26-year-old driver, charging him with assault, criminal possession of a dangerous weapon, and physical harassment. The driver is claiming self-defense; Bolaris says he did nothing to provoke him. The driver’s attorney was not immediately available to comment.

“I don’t know how it happened,” says Bolaris. “But it does seem like there’s this dark cloud following me around.”

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