Looks like donutgate is done. Ariana Grande will not be charged with criminal mischief after her donut-licking incident erupted last week.
A rep for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department told Us on Tuesday, July 14, that the owner of the donut shop, Wolfee Donuts, opted not to press charges against the global pop phenom. “The owner of Wolfee donuts declined to press charges against Ms. Grande,” the Sheriff’s Department told Us. “This incident was documented to assist the department of environmental health only.”
The incident started when Grande, 22, was caught on camera visiting the sweet shop in Lake Elsinor, Calif., late on Independence Day with one of her backup dancers, Ricky Alvarez, and a group of friends.
During her stop at the donut locale, Grande declared, “I hate Americans. I hate America!” and proceeded to lick and spit on a bunch of donuts that were later purchased by the shop’s customers.
“She was being rude,” the shop’s owner Joe Marin told Us after TMZ obtained the footage. “She kept telling my employee — an experienced donut server — she came to buy six donuts. She kept wanting the donuts in the back because my bakers were baking at that time. So my employee kept going in the back to go get the donuts that they were baking, [then] she brought them out there and put them on top of the donut display, and [Grande] sent her to go get some more… I saw they were getting a kick out of it and the two friends she brought, they saw what [her male friend] did, too.”
While Grande herself wasn’t punished, TMZ reported on Monday that the donut shop was downgraded from an A to a B grade on Monday, for leaving the donuts out in the open and making it easily accessible for the pop singer to spit on the glazed treats.
In the wake of the donut disaster last week, the pop songstress apologized in a statement to Us Weekly, as well in a heartfelt video message uploaded via YouTube. “I am EXTREMELY proud to be an American and I’ve always made it clear that I love my country. What I said in a private moment with my friend, who was buying the donuts, was taken out of context and I am sorry for not using more discretion with my choice of words,” she told Us. “That being said let me once again apologize if I have offended anyone with my poor choice of words.”
Grande claimed that her outrageous actions at the time reflected her personal viewpoints on healthy eating. “Food is very important to me and I sometimes get upset by how freely we as Americans eat and consume things without giving any thought to the consequences that it has on our health and society as a whole,” she said. “The fact that the United States has one of the highest child obesity rates in the world frustrates me. We need to do more to educate ourselves and our children about the dangers of overeating and the poison that we put into our bodies. We need to demand more from our food industry,” she continued.
Still, the video left a jarring mark on the “Problems” crooner. In a separate video apology, Grande further addressed her mistakes. “I’ve actually never been prouder to be American, to be honest, with the advances that we’ve made in the past couple of months. So here I am apologizing to y’all, puffy cheeks and all,” she said in her message. “Seeing a video of yourself behaving poorly that you have no idea is being taken is such a rude awakening, that you don’t know what to do. I was so disgusted with myself. Seeing how ugly it looks when you behave a certain way makes you want to never behave that way again. But you learn from it. I never want to be anything but a positive influence to my babes, and I feel like I let you all down which sucks.”
