Agencies/London
The family of a socialite and friend of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge - arrested after a clubber was allegedly hit with a beer bottle — yesterday dismissed the claims as “a complete farce”.
Julia Kadioglu, 32, was accused of retaliating after her investment banker fiance Till Bechtolsheimer, 31, was shoved after bumping into a fellow reveller while dancing at a Manhattan nightspot.
Kadioglu, who attended St Andrews University at the same time as William and Kate and appeared in the Duchess’s famous 2002 catwalk fashion show there, was led from the venue in handcuffs after a Stella Artois bottle was said to have been smashed over the head of Daniel Kurkowski, 27.
But yesterday her soon-to-be sister-in-law Laura Tomlinson, who won a dressage gold medal for Britain at the 2012 Olympics, said Kadioglu had been wrongly arrested. She said: “There was no incident with this guy. Julia has never seen him before — there was no exchange. What I find most worrying is this guy was never even asked to make a formal statement. She was arrested just on this guy’s word.
“It is a complete joke. Anyone who has ever met Julia knows it is a complete farce.”
Kadioglu was with a group of friends at the fashionable Dream Hotel’s Electric Room nightclub, said to be a favourite of stars like Sir Mick Jagger and Courtney Love, on January 19 when she was held at about 4.15am.
A complaint filed at the Manhattan criminal court claims she “did strike Kurkowski about the back of his head with a green glass bottle, causing Kurkowski to sustain a laceration and bleeding to the back of his head, and also causing him to suffer substantial pain”.
