A South Florida beauty pageant winner is no longer facing a misdemeanor battery charge.
The former Miss Miami Lakes USA, Vanessa Barcelo, was arrested last December for hitting a radio DJ with a baseball bat during a party at her home in Hialeah.
Barcelo claimed she was defending herself.
The charge was dropped Wednesday, after an eight-hour hearing under Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law. The DJ, Dave Duperon, had allegedly refused to leave after locking himself in a bedroom with Barcelo's unconscious cousin.
In a teary testimony in a Miami courtroom, Barcelo, 27, said the boozy party she hosted was to showcase her business, One Love Cakes. She was 26 at the time.
According to the testimony, Barcelo and her friends yelled at Duperon to leave and, when he didn't, a shouting match ensued.
Barcelo and her friends eventually got Duperon out of the house by crowding him, which was when Barcelo wielded the blue aluminum baseball bat “to intimidate him,” she said.
“I never touched him,” she testified.
She said Duperon grabbed the bat from her and swung it in large circles near the crowd of guests.
He testified that he handed the bat to a nearby neighborhood security guard who had gone to the house over parking violations. The security guard, testifying, confirmed that.
Barcelo's friend then punched Duperon in the face, breaking his cheekbone and knocking him to the ground.
Barcelo, who testified she did not know whether he still had the baseball bat, leaped onto Duperon while he was on the ground and slapped his face.
“I was scared for myself and everyone who was there,” she said. "I was afraid that I would get hit with the bat. I didn't know what else could have happened.”
The police report from that evening indicates that, “At one point, most of guests, including the arrested, became very intoxicated.’’
When asked whether he had permission to be on her property, bat or no bat, Barcelo testified, “Not at all."
And when asked why she hit him in the first place, she answered: “I was defending myself.”