STAR-BULLETIN / 2006 Tim Chapman, shown here wearing a baseball cap with attorneys Brook Hart, left, and William Bollard and Duane "Dog" Chapman's son Leland, was charged yesterday with first-degree terroristic threatening in an incident at Ala Moana Center.

Bare truth sought about bounty hunter

Bounty hunter Timothy Chapman was reportedly caught with his pants down -- literally -- at a Honolulu shopping center parking lot.

Prosecutors charged Chapman with first-degree terroristic threatening yesterday and might also charge him with indecent exposure, a spokesman for the Honolulu prosecutor's office said.

Police said security guards recognized Chapman from the reality television series "Dog the Bounty Hunter" when they responded to a report of a man fondling himself in a vehicle at an Ala Moana Center parking lot at about 9 p.m. Thursday.

Instead of stepping out of the vehicle as requested, Chapman got into the driver's seat of his truck and jumped a curb onto the sidewalk toward a security guard before driving away, said Jim Fulton, spokesman for the city prosecutor's office.

Chapman, 42, turned himself in yesterday and was initially arrested on suspicion of second-degree attempted murder and indecent exposure.

Terroristic threatening is a Class C felony punishable by up to five years' imprisonment. Indecent exposure is a petty misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of 30 days.

His lawyer, Brook Hart, said the incident was a "massive misunderstanding."

Hart said Chapman spilled juice or soda on his pants and went to the back seat of his Dodge Ram truck, which has dark tinted windows, to change his pants when security guards started yelling at him.

He said Chapman, to avoid negative publicity, made the mistake of attempting to drive away.

"It was simply a man who wet his pants with orange juice inadvertently and was changing them, doing nothing wrong at all and believing he had sufficient privacy to do it," Hart said.

Chapman was released on $11,000 bail last night.

Chapman works with Duane "Dog" Chapman and is a co-star on the reality television show. Even though they share the same last name, they are not related.

A&E television network put the Chapman show on hold indefinitely in early November after the release of a private phone conversation in which Duane Chapman repeatedly used a racial slur to describe his son's girlfriend.