Country music artist Morgan Wallen initially denied throwing a chair off the roof of Nashville bar Chief’s in 2024, according to police video footage obtained by The Associated Press.
The Metro Nashville Police Department released the footage from Wallen’s April 2024 arrest, after the AP filed a public records request. The video was taken through police car cameras and officers’ body cameras.
As shown in the body camera footage, officers are standing next to Wallen outside of the Chief’s bar on Broadway. An officer asks him what happened, and Wallen replies, “I don’t know.” The musician also tells an officer, “We’ve not tried to cause no problems, man. I don’t know what they are, I don’t know why.” The officer tells Wallen that the police were attempting to understand what happened after a chair fell from the bar’s rooftop and landed by the policeman’s patrol car. Wallen answers, “As you should.”
According to the video, officers “spoke to witnesses who identified Wallen as the one who threw the chair, and reviewed security cam footage.” Later footage shows the musician in the backseat of a patrol cruiser, and saying, “I ain’t done nothing wrong.” The footage also shows officers handcuffing him.
Billboard has reached out to reps for Wallen for comment.
Wallen was arrested on April 8, 2024, and briefly jailed after he threw a chair from the sixth-floor rooftop of the bar Chief’s on Lower Broadway in downtown Nashville. The chair reportedly landed a few feet away from where two Metro Nashville police officers were standing. The country star was charged with three counts of reckless endangerment and one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct. In December 2024, Wallen pled guilty to two misdemeanor charges of reckless endangerment in Nashville court and was sentenced to two years’ probation and seven days in a DUI education center.
Nearly two weeks after Wallen’s arrest, he addressed the incident, writing on social media, “I didn’t feel right publicly checking in until I made amends with some folks. I’ve touched base with Nashville law enforcement, my family, and the good people at Chief’s. I’m not proud of my behavior, and I accept responsibility…. I have the utmost respect for the officers working every day to keep us all safe. Regarding my tour, there will be no change. -MW”
Since that time, Wallen has seen his most recent album, I’m the Problem, spend a dozen nonconsecutive weeks atop the all-genre Billboard 200, and has regaled fans with his stadium-headlining I’m the Problem Tour this year.
Watch the video obtained by The Associated Press below: