News Segment

RUSH GUITARIST ARRESTED IN FLORIDA:

January 2, 2004

MIAMI (Reuters) – The lead guitarist for the Canadian rock band Rush pushed a sheriff’s deputy down a staircase during a New Year’s Eve scuffle with police at a hotel in Florida, authorities said on Friday.

Alex Zivojinovich, who uses the stage name Alex Lifeson, was arrested on six charges including aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest and disorderly intoxication.

Police said they had to use a stun gun to subdue Zivojinovich, 50, and his son Justin, at a New Year’s party at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Naples.

Justin Zivojinovich, 33, and his wife, Michelle, 30, were also arrested. All three are Canadian citizens.

The trouble started shortly before midnight on New Year’s Eve when Justin Zivojinovich got onto the hotel’s stage, interfering with the house band with the intent of singing his wife a song, according to reports filed by the Collier County Sheriff’s Office.

Father and son struggled with sheriff’s deputies who were called by hotel security to handle the disturbance and the elder Zivojinovich pushed a deputy down the stairs in a hotel stairwell as she grappled with him, the reports say.

“He was screaming obscenities and extremely violent,” one report said of the Rush guitarist.

Officers used a Taser stun gun to subdue Alex Zivojinovich before and after he spat in the face of a deputy, the reports said.

Courtesy of Reuters