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Allenby says he can’t remember strip bar

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Robert Allenby, of Australia, talks to the media at a practice round for the Phoenix Open golf tournament, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

Australian golfer Robert Allenby says he has no memory of going to a strip club in Honolulu on the night he says he was kidnapped and mugged.

In fact, he told reporters at a Tuesday news conference in Arizona, he has no memory at all of the two and a half hours after he left the Amuse wine bar on Kapiolani Boulevard on the night of Jan. 16 after missing the cut at the Sony Open.

The Golf Channel reported Monday that the four-time tour winner ran up a $3,400 bar tab at the Femme Nu strip club around midnight. The club is about a mile away from Amuse, near where Allenby was found with bruises on his face at about 1:30 a.m. by Charade Keane, a homeless woman who lives at Ala Moana Beach Park.

"From 11:06 to 1:27 a.m. I have no memory," Allenby said. "I can’t tell you how frustrating that is because we all want to know the truth and we all want to get to the bottom of it."

Still, Allenby said he is sticking to his story of the events of that night.

"I think the No. 1 thing that you should all remember is that my story stays exactly the same as the way I told it. I told you what I knew, and I told you what someone told me. That’s the bottom line. I never lied to anyone," Allenby said.

Allenby originally said he had been drugged, kidnapped, robbed of his credit cards, thrown into a car trunk and dumped 6.5 miles away in a park that night. That account, he said, came in part from Keane, who helped him get away from attackers.

Keane acknowledged helping Allenby but has denied telling him that he was thrown to the street from the trunk of a car.

Allenby said he has taken a blood test that could show what drugs were in his system. But he did not tell reporters what the drug test showed.

Allenby said he thinks the media has "blown the story out of proportion" and he urged reporters to let Honolulu police do their job and not to interfere with the investigation. "There’s a reason why detectives in Honolulu are some of the best in the world," he said.

Police have opened investigations into second-degree robbery and fraudulent use of credit card in a case that has received widespread media attention amid conflicting accounts.

Police offered no further details about the case Monday except to say the investigation is continuing with a focus on what are believed to be more than $20,000 in fraudulent charges on Allenby’s credit cards.

Chris Khamis, a homeless man, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser last week that Allenby injured himself by passing out and hitting his head on a rock. The Australian golfer also told Khamis tht he was depressed and had been drugged at a strip club where he went to get "some action," Khamis said.

"There was no crime (when I was present). It was his stupidity," Khamis said in an interview. "(Allenby) passed out and hit his head. I was there. Nobody pushed him out of a car."

On Monday, the Golf Channel reported that Allenby, who had dinner with his caddie and a friend from Australia, ultimately left the wine bar with two men and a woman and ended up at Club Femme Nu on Kapiolani Boulevard.

"At the end of the day what’s happened has happened and the police will come out with the right story," Allenby said Tuesday.

Allenby said he posted a photo of his injured face on his Facebook account on Jan. 17 because he couldn’t remember his phone number after what had happened and wanted to let his family know he was OK.

He said he didn’t know how the Golf Channel got the photo, which led to the first story of his mugging.

Allenby said he has a "great support team" and hopes to "overcome this ordeal and get on with my life."

He is playing this week at the Waste Management Phoenix Open after skipping last week’s Humana Challenge in California to recover from his injuries.

"Obviously there’s a lot going on in my head. I’m not expecting much this week," Allenby said. 

.I think at the end of the day, I was in a place having a nice dinner and having a nice night and then I became the victim and now it’s all being turned around," he said. "I do read comments and I do read what everyone has said." 

"I’ve always been someone who holds no regrets … if i made a mistake I will apologize for it," Allenby said.

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