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Nick Bollea Getting Ready To Leave Pinellas Jail

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By The Tampa Tribune | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 20, 2008

Updated: 10/20/2008 11:11 pm

CLEARWATER - Nick Bollea will be released from jail sometime after midnight early Tuesday morning. Authorities said that could come any time after midnight and that they would not announce the exact time.

Bollea served 166 days of his eight-month sentence for reckless driving.

In August 2007, police say he was street racing in Clearwater, lost control of his car and severely injured his friend and passenger John Graziano. Graziano, a former Marine, remains hospitalized and will need medical care for the rest of his life.

In March, Graziano's guardian sued the Bolleas for alleged negligence leading to the car crash. Attorney George Tragos says a recent attempt at mediation failed.

Bollea has said he wanted his own reality show after appearing in the his father's cable television reality show, "Hogan Knows Best."

Tragos says the Graziano family feels the Hogans are exploiting his friend.

"It's awful Nick is going to get a reality show because he went to jail because of the permanent harm he caused another human being," Tragos said.

Linda Bollea is expected to pick up her son. She wore a shirt Monday that said "Stoparazzi" and said she hopes the media will "take some mercy on my poor Nickie when he gets out."

He was sentenced to eight months in jail after pleading no contest in May to a charge of reckless driving involving serious bodily injury. In August 2007 Bollea was involved in a car wreck that left his passenger, Graziano, with severe brain damage.

Bollea was driving a yellow Toyota Supra owned by his father, and Graziano was in the passenger seat when it fishtailed across a median and hit a palm tree. Graziano wasn't wearing a seat belt.

He was moved from an isolation cell in June to another part of the jail, which he shared with other teenage inmates.

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