Sooner or later, Facebook had to figure into the sports-crime scene. There are at least two cases now of pro football players getting arrested for assault in fights resulting from their wives looking at their Facebook friends lists.Clinton Hart, a free-agent safety who most recently played for the miserable St. Louis Rams, was arrested last week in a bizarre fracas involving his wife, Kelli Hart. Oddly, it seems that Clinton called the police and asked them to come to his wife’s place of business in the middle of the afternoon on April 27.
Clinton had been on a computer in her office, left the building, and returned to collect a cell phone. When he came back, according to arrest affidavits, Kelli was blocking the door with her arms and legs, refusing to let him in. Apparently, she had gone on to his Facebook account and discovered a message from an unknown woman.
That didn’t go over with Kelli, who went bananas. According to the affidavit, Clinton claims she picked up a brick and threatened to throw it at his car (police didn’t find a brick). Somehow during this mess Kelli’s pants pocket got ripped and a cut opened up over her mouth. Husband Hart was charged with battery, although it should be noted that Kelli vociferously insisted that her husband should not be arrested. Give him 61 points on our list.
This follows last year’s first (known) Facebook-related sports-crime incident. In that instance, Atlanta Falcons offensive tackle Quinn Ojinnaka was chilling at his house in Suwanee, Georgia, getting ready to watch a basketball game, when his wife burst into the room and stabbed him with a pen. She had gone through his Facebook account and discovered women she didn’t approve of on his friends list.
Ojinnaka responded as you might expect, spitting on his wife and throwing her on some stairs before tossing her out of the house. Neither Ojinnaka nor his wife requested medical assistance; he was arrested the next day on a misdemeanor charge of simple battery.
It’s hard to imagine this is going to be the last of the Facebook-inspired sports arrests. Anyone out there who knows of any others, please make sure to write in.
Bulldog season
After a powerful sports-crime performance this winter by the Oregon Ducks football team, we’re now seeing a new squad step up on the gridiron: the University of Georgia football team. This bears watching, since Georgia has been a bit of a troubled program in recent years.
Already this spring, four ’Dawgs have been in trouble with the law. Quarterback Zach Mettenberger was busted in March on five misdemeanor charges, including underage drinking and having a false ID. On April 20, punter Trent Dittmer was also nabbed on a public-intoxication charge, and just this past week, sophomore offensive lineman Josh Parrish was arrested on underage booze charges.
Linebacker Montez Robinson was the fourth of the group and the only one carrying a serious charge. On April 4, he was arrested for battery and family violence stemming from a confrontation involving a woman with whom he’s got a bit of a history. Last December, he allegedly pushed the woman and smashed the taillights of her car. Most recently, he’s accused of grabbing her and pushing her off a bed, then slamming her on the ground. Robinson, like Mettenberger and Dittmer, was kicked off the team by the genuinely hard-ass head coach Mark Richt, and Parrish may soon follow, but as of this writing he is merely suspended indefinitely.
