WWW- Former Miss Nevada USA Katie Rees said yesterday her breast-licking, thong-flashing pictures were a youthful mistake – but a friend who witnessed the display said it wasn’t her first revealing episode.
“I had seen her doing similar things before,” the friend told the Daily News about the March 2004 night when Rees’ indiscretions were caught on camera. “It was not unusual for her. She was always out drinking with friends and getting wild.”
The Donald Trump-owned Miss USA pageant stripped Rees of her tiara after the outrageous pictures emerged, even though Trump let Miss USA Tara Conner keep her crown after she was seen indulging in underage drinking, snorting cocaine and hooking up with a string of men, according to sources.
“I feel I have been unfairly treated and I am being judged without due process,” Rees, 22, said in a statement yesterday. “I am very embarrassed by the situation. Regardless, such a brief and distant lapse in judgment does not warrant my loss of the title I worked so hard to achieve.”
The pictures show Rees and two female friends flashing, fondling and licking each other inside and outside a bar in Tampa.
“We were all drinking, including Katie,” a male friend who was there told The News. “It was a bunch of us having fun and getting drunk.”
Rees was 19 at the time, and one of the other women in the pictures was celebrating her new breast implants, the friend said.
But the man shown licking Rees’ breast in one photo, Tampa deejay Shaun Smith, said last night he had never seen her act like that before or since – and he didn’t see her drinking that night.
“We were just a bunch of friends out having fun one night. It just happened in the moment,” said Smith, known as DJ Structure. “I do believe it’s a double standard. If everyone deserves a second chance, why not Katie?”
Rees has scheduled a press conference today in Florida, where she grew up before moving to Nevada. But she said in a statement that “this was by no means representative of who I was, who I am or who I will become.”
Rees’ lawyer Mario Torres told The News she may have grounds for a breach of contract suit against Trump’s pageant.
Trump and the pageant wouldn’t talk about Rees yesterday, except to say that the decision was final.