MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT — A week of "mania" that "distorted reality" led a male model to dance naked in Times Square while taunting police and ranting about Donald Trump, he said Friday following his latest court appearance.
Krit McClean, 21, was in the midst of a “manic episode” during the June 30 incident, in which he bared all atop the TKTS booth before jumping to the ground below, Assistant District Attorney Daniel Makofsky told a judge at a hearing on Friday.
“It appears that this incident likely took place while the defendant was experiencing a manic episode, which was the first episode in his life,” Makofsky said.
The charges against McClean, who's appeared on the covers of GQ and Harper's Bazaar, will be dismissed if he continues to receive psychiatric treatment and doesn’t get arrested again, the judge said Friday after granting him a conditional discharge.
Dressed in a shiny white top, black jeans and Nike high-top sneakers, the model appeared at ease Friday morning as he sat next to his lawyer in the courtroom, chatting quietly with him before and after the proceedings.
In a statement sent via email following the hearing, McClean — who is currently a student at Columbia University — said he’d been diagnosed with “a genetic predisposition for manic episodes.”
The Times Square incident, he wrote, was “a culmination of an unaware seven days of mania which distorted reality."
“I respect the court’s desire to understand what triggered my actions, and would like to thank the NYPD officers for their patience in handling the situation,” he said. “I will continue working with my doctor to maintain a balanced well-being… being self aware is progress in itself.”
As part of the conditional discharge McClean received, he will continue to attend two sessions of psychiatric treatment a week and stay on the medication he has been prescribed, Makofsky added.
McClean was charged with public lewdness, disorderly conduct and exposure of a person for his antics in Times Square, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said.
Those charges will be dropped if the judge's conditions have all been met at the end of six months, the judge said.
The model was represented by Ford Models at the time of the Times Square incident, but a source told the New York Post the agency dropped him after the incident.
He describes himself as a "free agent" on his Instagram account.
“This was a fair resolution of the charges against Krit,” his attorney Dan Ollen wrote in his own statement following the hearing. “He is thrilled that he can now get on with his life.”
