ESPN’s Outside the Lines has new details about what police say happened the night three high school basketball players are accused of attacking and sodomizing a teammate with a pool cue. They include a timeline of how the attack unfolded, how other students were similarly hazed, how long coaches waited to report what happened, as well as the local prosecutor saying the the coaches found “a 15-year-old freshman player covered in blood, urine and feces.”
The attack happened shorty after 7 p.m. on Dec. 22, OTL reports, inside a Gatlinburg cabin while the Ooltewah High School boys basketball team was in town for a tournament. Coach Andre Montgomery and assistant coach Karl Williams were upstairs in the cabin when the attack occurred, OTL reports. The police report is under seal, but OTL says that it has obtained details from that report.
According to the police report of the incident, two 16-year-old sophomores and a 17-year-old senior member of the team had locked the door to a downstairs bedroom and overpowered the freshman, wrestling him onto the bed.
All three of the teens admitted to their roles in the attack, according to the report.
One of the 16-year-olds told police that he held his freshman teammate down on the bed by lying across his back, while the other 16-year-old held down his teammate by the hips.
The 17-year-old then pressed a pool cue against the freshman’s clothing with so much force that it broke through the teen’s clothing and penetrated his rectum, according to the police report.
The 17-year-old told an investigating officer that he “accidentally” used too much force and later described the alleged assault as “horseplay.”
An unnamed Ooltewah player said the coaches heard the screaming and Williams went downstairs. Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston told OTL, “that the coaches found a 15-year-old freshman player covered in blood, urine and feces.”
Neither Montgomery nor Williams called law enforcement, according to the report obtained by OTL. Instead, the report to police came from a person at the hospital where the teen was taken for treatment.
Other players told police that this was one of four similar attacks with two other freshmen having “pool cues pressed against their rectums, but through their clothing. ” OTL reports. A fourth player told police that he had been attacked in a similar way two days earlier.
The high school’s athletic director, Allard J. Nayadley, Montgomery, and Williams are all charged with failure to report child sexual abuse. Three basketball players from the team are awaiting trial on charges of aggravated rape and assault.
Image via Associated Press