Jeff Ruby turned away O.J. Simpson
Jeff Ruby, owner of the steakhouse Jeff Ruby’s Louisville, asked O.J. Simpson to leave his restaurant minutes after Simpson arrived about 10:30 Friday night.
Told by a customer that the former football player had arrived at the restaurant, 325 W. Main St., Ruby said, he informed Simpson, “I am not serving you.”
“He had a party of 10 or 12 people,” said Ruby, who had served Simpson many times at his Cincinnati restaurants before the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, of which Simpson was acquitted.
Ruby was offended by the attempted publishing last fall of Simpson’s book, “O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened,” and the television interviews scheduled to go with it, all of which were canceled after negative public reaction.
“He continues to torture the lives of the families whose lives he’s ruined,” said Ruby, who pointed out that Simpson has not paid the $33.5 million he owes the Goldman family after being found “criminally liable” in a civil suit.
“This was the only thing I could do for the victims’ families,” said Ruby. He said the 50 or so people in the private room where Simpson had been seated “stood up and applauded me” when Simpson left.
“And who walks in five minutes later?” asked Ruby.
Michael Jordan.
From Food Editor Sarah Fritschner for The Buzz
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070508/COLUMNISTS18/70508029