A court has found former D.C. Council member Harold Brazil guilty of a misdemeanor assault and sentenced him to a 30-day suspended sentence, six months of unsupervised probation and a $100 fine.
The sentence came as a result of a night out back in October of 2008 in which Brazil went to dinner with his assistant, Elena Mirsayapova and her friend, Petra Nikolow. As it happened, Nikolow decided during dinner that she wanted to have her first-ever tattoo done. She proceeded to convince Mirsayapova and Brazil to accompany her. The trio then made their way to Jinx Proof, a local Georgetown tattoo shop.
To make a long(ish) story short, Nikolow went into the back to have her tattoo done. The sound of the needle buzzing apparently spooked Mirsayapova and Brazil, who were sitting at the front of the shop. When Mirsayapova got up to go take a look at her friend in the back room, she was prevented by a shop employee and told that it was only customers who were allowed beyond that point. An argument ensued,at which point councilman Brazil stepped up and proceeded to take on the staff of Jinx Proof. Yes, you read that last sentence correctly: a councilman got in a fight with three tattoo artists. Damn!
Well, when all was said and done, despite Harold Brazil’s claims that he was called a “nigger”, by Jinx Proof’s counterman Francis “Tad” Peyton (which Peyton denies), D.C. Superior Court Judge Jennifer Anderson found Brazil guilty of initiating the fight. After the court verdict was announced, Brazil requested that he not be sentenced to prison (which he won’t be) and then made some weird comment about ham sandwiches.