Interesting news for celebrity followers in Fresno today. According to PopEater/Wire Services, a judge in the Bahamas has dismissed charges against two people that were accused of trying to extort money from actor John Travolta. The reason being that the actor no longer wished to pursue a case that stemmed from the death of his teenage son.
A motion to drop the case was submitted by prosecutor Neil Braithwaite, even after a jury had been selected and a retrial for the defendants was scheduled. As Braithwaite says, "The Travolta family has said that this matter has caused them unbelievable stress and pain and they wish to put this whole thing behind them."
The defendants, ambulance driver Tarino Lightbourne and his attorney, politician Pleasant Bridgewater, had been accused of threatening to release private information on Travolta's 16-year-old son Jett, who died in January 2009 at the family's vacation home in Grand Bahama reportedly from a seizure. Lightbourne was one of the medics that had treated Jett and allegedly demanded $25 million from Travolta, with the aid of Bridgewater, who after being charged in the incident then resigned her position in the Bahamas Senate. In October, a judge declared a mistrial after a Bahamian lawmaker accused the jury, still in deliberation, of acquitting one of the suspects,
Travolta himself had testified during that trial and according to one of his attorneys last October, was prepared to testify again. However, the actor said that his decision today not to take the stand again was prompted by the delay in the prosecution.
As Travolta said in a statement to The Associated Press, "The long-pending status of this matter continued to take a heavy emotional toll on my family, causing us to conclude that it was finally time to put this matter behind . Therefore, after much reflection I concluded that it was in my family's best interest for me not to voluntarily return to The Bahamas to testify a second time at trial."
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