Doughnut Shop Owner: Police and Media are Wrong, I Want to Press Charges Against Ariana Grande

The owner of the doughnut shop where pop star Ariana Grande licked and spit on several doughnuts is disputing a police report that claimed he declined to file charges against Grande over the incident.

Joe Marin, owner of Wolfee Donuts in Lake Elsinore, told Toronto radio station KISS 92.5 that he “doesn’t know” where the report that he declined to file charges “came from,” because he wants charges brought against Grande over the incident, in which the pop star licked several doughnuts she had not purchased before saying, “I hate Americans. I hate America.”

“No, I did press charges,” Marin told the radio station. “And then when I was reading the newspapers, it said my name, that I decided not to, and I don’t know where that came from.”

In a statement Monday, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department had said that Marin had “declined to press charges against Ms. Grande” and directed all further inquiries to the Riverside County Department of Environmental Health.

Deputy Sheriff Michael Vasquez had confirmed to People magazine that Marin had “declined to press criminal charges against Ms. Grande.”

But Marin said that is not what happened. The doughnut shop owner detailed the exchange he had with Lake Elsinore police:

“The last time I talked to the police officer, he told me, ‘How many doughnuts did she lick?’ Then I said, ‘Well, she licked two of them and spit on two of them…’ And then he said, ‘Well, how many doughnuts are you out?.. How much are your doughnuts?’ I said ‘A dollar a piece.’ Then the cop said, ‘Ok, so basically, you lost four dollars.’ And then I said, ‘Well, that’s not the point, though.'”

Marin also said that local people who had viewed the video were all “on his side,” and that police had caused him a headache when they told him they could not view the surveillance footage on their equipment and made him transfer it to a CD.

“I think she (Grande) should be pressed with charges, because the thing is, just because she’s popular, and if it was one of us, like a regular customer, yeah, they would do something about it.”

Marin added that even if Grande apologized directly to him for licking the doughnuts, something she has not addressed in either of her two apologies, he still would not drop charges against her.

Wolfee Donuts received a heath downgrade to a “B” rating last week after an Environmental Health inspector visited the shop in the wake of the incident. The shop can remain open while it works to correct the violations.