IN THE STREETS & ON THE WEB

Screech Arrested For Stabbing Somebody With A Switchblade

Dustin Diamond, the actor who played Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” tried to lie his way out of getting arrested for stabbing a man during a bar fight on Christmas night.

But he proved to be as bad at lying to cops as Screech was at picking up girls in high school.

Diamond, 37, and fiancée Amanda Schutz got into a throwdown at a bar in his hometown of Port Washington, Wis., after patrons refused to stop taking pictures of the 90s sitcom goofball, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday in Ozaukee County court.

Diamond stabbed a male adversary just under the man’s right armpit with a 3.75-inch stiletto folding knife, cops said.

When police caught up with Diamond, who drove away from the bar with Schutz about 11:15 p.m., he tried to lie — but failed to deliver his line. He told cops that as they were trying to leave, a commotion broke out, and when he looked up from signing for his credit card, Schutz had a bloody face and two men were holding her by the hair, the complaint said.

Diamond said he charged the men, pen in hand. But he contradicted himself. “I moved his arm up and around and I had the knife in my hand — or the, ah, pen — in my hand,” Diamond said, the complaint noted.

He made the same mistake again. “Officer Nye observed that twice during his conversation with Diamond, as Diamond was talking about having a pen in his hand, he referred to it as a knife, and then corrected himself, saying it was a pen,” the complaint says.

Cops then told him the evidence they had against him. A security video from the Grand Ave. Saloon showed Diamond armed with a blade, according to the complaint and a video clip posted by TMZ.

“There’s a f---ing knife!” a female bystander can be heard exclaiming on the video, as Diamond stood near a foosball table, blade in hand, according to the footage TMZ published.

The stiletto knife was found in Diamond’s car and had “moisture, possibly blood, on it,” the complaint said. And the victim was treated for the stab wound at a hospital.

Screech then ’fessed up, admitting he was armed with a knife. He said he pulled the knife, which he’d gotten for Christmas, because six or seven people were holding Schutz and he couldn’t “shake his finger and say let her go,” the complaint said.

Diamond, whose post-sitcom life has featured a bankruptcy filing and release of a sex tape, was charged with three misdemeanors, including one for carrying a concealed weapon, and a felony rap for recklessly endangering safety. He was arraigned and held in lieu of $10,000 bail.

“I always knew not to mess with Screech,” Mario Lopez, who played A.C. Slater on “Saved by the Bell,” tweeted Friday.