Shannon Beador’s Ex John Janssen Recalls Her ‘Possessed’ DUI Incident

John Janssen is opening up about his experience with ex-girlfriend Shannon Beador on the night of her DUI.

Janssen, 62, shared his side of the story with Entertainment Tonight on Wednesday, November 27, describing the events that led to Beador being arrested and charged with a DUI and hit-and-run in September 2023. That November, The Real Housewives of Orange County star, 60, was sentenced to three years of informal probation as well as 40 hours of community service. At the time of her arrest, Beador’s blood alcohol level was more than .24 percent — three times over the legal limit. 

Janssen told Entertainment Tonight that he’d returned from a trip to Catalina Island with friends to find Beador in his home.

“We hadn’t talked,” he recalled. “I didn’t expect to see her there. The level of intoxication was shocking, and her issue was she had lost her phone. I was always there to help Shannon with her issues, and I guess it had been left in an Uber.”

Janssen said that after the Uber driver dropped the phone off at Beador’s house, he went over there to place it by her door where it would be easy for her to find. He didn’t want his ex staying overnight at his house. 

“That’s where the story gets bad,” Janssen said. “She went into extreme rage because I hadn’t brought the phone back to her. It’s like she was possessed, and she continued to physically attack me for probably the next minute, and I’m backing away the whole time.”

Then his daughters showed up and he asked Beador to go. He alleged that she reacted by “screaming at the top of her lungs” and “threatening” his children. Around this time, Beader let her dog Archie, who was staying with Janssen, out the door. 

“I’ve got scratches on me, and I’m pretty upset,” he recalled.

Meanwhile, “Archie is now out running around the street, so that’s causing a scene. And finally, she gets Archie. She comes over to try and get her car. I stand in front of her to stop her from getting in her car, and I finally said, ‘Shannon, you’re a drunk idiot and you’re making a big mistake.’ And she gets in her car, she floors it in reverse out of my driveway, comes within inches of hitting one of my daughters.”

Afterward, Janssen backed off, “because I’m not going to touch her in any way, and then have somehow accusations made against me for something else. So she reverses out, almost hits my daughter, and then races around the corner, and we hear the crash.” (Beador had clipped another house with Archie in her car and fled the scene.)

Janssen ran toward the sound of the crash, but his daughters stopped him, saying, “Dad, you can’t go anywhere near her. We’ll go.”

Police soon arrived at Janssen’s house and returned Archie to him. Janssen recalled knowing then that Beador had been arrested. She did not respond to his calls and texts, so he confirmed with a hospital that she was there.

“I said, ‘Can I come see her?’ And [the nurse] said, ‘No, you cannot. You will not be allowed to see her. She’s under arrest, so do not come,’” he told Entertainment Tonight. “After that, I was on the phone off and on the entire night, zero sleep, with [Beador’s] daughter, and the next morning I was at the police station waiting for her to be released from jail.”

The following morning, he picked up Beador from jail and “put aside my sadness, anger, frustration of being terrorized that night, and my daughter is being terrorized that night.”

Janssen “took her home, I helped her get undressed, I bathed her, I fed her, I did her grocery shopping, I took her laundry to the cleaners, I took her to her doctor appointments,” he said. “I cared for her for the next 10 days. Is that a guy who didn’t care?”

Later, something happened between Beador and one of his kids that Janssen, without giving details, called “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” He phoned Beador and said, “I’m sorry but I can’t be friends with you. I need to completely divorce myself from your world and your life.”

Janssen said he decided to go public about that night for clarity’s sake.

“I wanted this story to die, and it’s really sad that that got brought up on [Real Housewives] because that now forces my hand to have to explain, because the way it’s left right now, there’s too many negative implications on me, and anybody who knows the whole truth of that night would not think I did anything wrong,” he said.

Us Weekly has reached out to a rep for The Real Housewives of Orange County for comment.

Tamra Judge and Heather Dubrow said on the franchise’s reunion episode last week that Janssen had heard Beador crash her car. Hearing this, Beador said she felt “numb,” conceding, “I’ve heard that he says I punched him. But I don’t remember everything. I don’t know what I did that night.”

Beador had been involved in a years-long legal battle with Janssen, who’s engaged to Alexis Bellino. Janssen previously sued Beador for breach of oral contract and promissory fraud, claiming she had not paid him back the $75,000 he’d spent on her facelift.

At first, Beador agreed to pay him for half of the amount, but changed her mind when she learned he allegedly had footage of her 2023 DUI arrest. She offered another sum in exchange for a non-disparagement agreement, which Janssen declined.

It was confirmed by Us on November 19 that Janssen and Beador had reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit, with Janssen filing a notice of settlement. On November 21, Beador uploaded a screenshot via her Instagram Story of her “Outgoing Wire Transfer Receipt” for a sum of $60,000. She captioned the post, “Enjoy,” and tagged both Bellino and Janssen’s official accounts.

In July, Beador got candid with Us about how she’s still trying to better herself after her DUI arrest last year.

“I’ve done a lot and I still have more to do,”  Beador said. “I work with my therapist, and I have a psychiatrist from the program that I went to for 30 days. And I feel as though I’m growing. I’m headed down a healthier path, and I’m trying to create any type of positive thing that I can out of a horrible situation.”