He says he fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden and now he’s been arrested.
During the early morning hours of April 1, former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill was arrested and brought to jail on a drunken driving charge after police found him asleep in a parked car.
The call of a man asleep behind the wheel of a running vehicle came in at around 2:30 a.m.
Butte-Silver Bow County Sheriff’s Department responded to a convenient store parking lot in O‘Neill’s hometown of Montana. After waking O’Neill up, the responding officer noticed odd behavior.
“He was confused. His actions were consistent with somebody who might be under the influence of something,” Butte-Silver Bow County Undersheriff George Skuletich said.
Initially, the former SEAL denied drinking, but relayed inconsistent stories to the officers—one included taking prescription medication in order to help him sleep, according to the undersheriff.
After failing a breathalyzer and denying other tests, the officers took him to jail—where he once again denied further testing.
He was charged with a misdemeanor and was released two hours later after posting a $685 bond.
This was O'Neill’s first arrest.
He first joined the Navy in 1995 and participated in the rescue of the last survivor of a four-man team, who were attacked in 2005 while tracking a Taliban leader in Afghanistan. The rescue was later made into a movie, “Lone Survivor.”
O'Neill also participated in the 2009 rescue of the captain on a merchant ship overrun by Somali pirates—the subject of the Tom Hanks film “Captain Phillips.”
He began giving speeches about his role in the 2011 bin Laden assassination back in 2014, and told The Associated Press the American public deserved to know more details about the killing, which received mixed reactions among his teammates and the public.
According to previous Pentagon reports, it is unclear whose shots killed bin Laden.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
