Food Network Star Arrested on Suspicion of Domestic Assault

Police in St. Paul, Minnesota, arrested Food Network chef Justin Sutherland on the evening of June 28, 2024, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, on suspicion of domestic assault and felony threats of violence.

Around 8 p.m. that night, the paper reported, officers were called to a St. Paul address after receiving reports that a man with a gun was outside the address. Sgt. Mike Ernster, spokesman for the St. Paul Police Department, told the paper that the man, identified as Sutherland, 39, was booked at the Ramsey County jail.

However, according to Bring Me the News, reported that responding officers said he did not have a gun as previously reported.

“Our investigators will be working to determine the circumstances that led to this arrest being made,” Ernster told the Pioneer Press. “When we have those details, we will share them.”

Ernster also told the paper that the St. Paul Police Department will present a case to the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office for charging consideration. Sutherland remained in jail the day after his arrest, per the Pioneer Press, but it’s not clear if he has since been released.

Justin Sutherland & His Girlfriend Have Been Hospitalized With Grave Injuries After Accidents Over Last 2 Years

Sutherland’s arrest is the latest crisis in the chef’s personal life over the last two years. The Minnesota native, who appeared as a guest judge on Food Network’s “Top Chef” in May, has had many highs and lows during the last two years.

In early July 2022, he was seriously injured in a boating accident, according to People. When the chef’s hat blew off in a wind gust, he fell overboard while trying to grab it and his head and arm were hit by the motor, his family wrote on a GoFundMe campaign that raised over $287,000 for the chef, who didn’t have health insurance.

Sutherland’s family shared that he broke his arm, “severely broke” his jaw, and required multiple plastic surgeries to heal lacerations on his head and face. In March 2023, he told People that his “nose was completely destroyed” in the accident and that he’d required “a full dental reconstructive surgery.”

Meanwhile, Sutherland’s girlfriend, Serena Lange, revealed via Instagram in May that she’d been hospitalized after surviving an eight-story fall from their hotel balcony in the Bahamas, into a shallow pool below.

“I was leaning too far over talking to the people below me and fell forward,” she wrote. “Justin tried to catch me, but I slipped thru his arms.”

Lange said she suffered a broken femur, fractured hip, a small tear in her kidney, and two collapsed lungs, writing that it was “a miracle that those are my only injuries.” After being rushed to a local hospital with “extremely poor” conditions, Lange said she “chose to be airlifted in a private medical plane to the closest hospital in the states for my surgery,” where she had a metal rod placed in her leg, tubes in her lungs and received three blood transfusions.

“I had to learn how to operate my leg and walk again which has been very humbling,” she wrote, and shared her own GoFundMe campaign. As of June 30, it had raised $23,000 of her $30,000 goal.

In addition to thanking her sister for caring for her in the hospital, Lange wrote, “Justin— you have done everything you can to make me feel comforted and calm while going thru your own trauma of the whole situation. I literally could never thank you enough.”

Police did not identify the woman who was present during Sutherland’s June 29 arrest, so it’s not clear if Lange was involved.

Rising Celebrity Chef Justin Sutherland Said He Expected 2024 to Be a ‘Huge Year’ for Him

Sutherland is a rising TV star after winning Food Network’s “Iron Chef America,” co-starring in the network’s “Fast Foodies,” and competing on season 16 of Bravo’s “Top Chef,” per IMDb. In December, Sutherland’s TruTV series “Taste the Culture” earned him the Daytime Emmy Award for Culinary Host, according to the Star Tribune.

In January, Sutherland stepped away from his first restaurant, Handsome Hog in St. Paul, but told Mpls.St.Paul magazine, “2024 is going to be a huge year, I’m so grateful for everything that’s come before, the good and the bad, I’m ready to take those lessons and embrace forward motion.”

The magazine reported that Sutherland and his dad, Kerry Sutherland, have launched their own restaurant group and opened new egg sandwich shops in Portland and St. Paul called Big E’s. They also have  as well as two restaurants based on his 2022 cookbook, Northern Soul, at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport and Grand View resort in northern Minnesota.

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