OAN’s James Meyers
3:03 PM – Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Prosecutors dropped all criminal charges against PGA tour golfer Scottie Scheffler on Wednesday, just less than two weeks after the world’s top golfer was arrested outside the PGA Championship in Louisville, Kentucky.
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Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell said his office couldn’t move forward with the charges based on the evidence in the case.
Scheffler was charged with second-degree assault of a police officer, third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding signals from officers directing traffic when he was arrested outside Louisville’s Valhalla Golf Club.
“I hold no ill will toward Officer [Bryan] Gillis. I wish to put this incident behind me and move on, and I hope he will do the same,” Scheffler wrote in an Instagram story on Wednesday, referencing the Louisville police officer who arrested him outside Valhalla Golf Club. “Police officers have a difficult job and I hold them in high regard. This was a severe miscommunication in a chaotic situation.”
O’Connell also said prosecutors would not pursue the case and asked for the charges to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning they can’t be filed again in the future.
“Based upon the totality of the evidence, my office cannot move forward in the prosecution of the charges filed against Mr. Scheffler,” O’Connell said. “Mr. Scheffler’s characterization that this was a ‘big misunderstanding’ is corroborated by the evidence. The evidence we reviewed supports the conclusion that Detective Gillis was concerned for public safety at the scene when he initiated contact with Mr. Scheffler. However, Mr. Scheffler’s actions and the evidence surrounding their exchange during this misunderstanding do not satisfy the elements of any criminal offenses.”
A Louisville Metro Police detective alleged that Scheffler’s SUV accelerated and dragged him to the ground, causing serious pain, swelling and abrasions to his knee and left wrist. The two-time major champion was trying to drive around traffic outside Valhalla Golf Club that had backed up after a man was struck and killed by a shuttle bus earlier that morning.
Scheffler was booked and released less than two hours before his second-round tee time.
“We’ve been going back and forth since it happened,” Steve Romines, Scheffler’s attorney, told ESPN. “I had made it clear to them, as I’ve said, that it was not a negotiation. We were either going to litigate the case or it was going to be dismissed. They correctly came to the conclusion that there was not probable cause and the case should be dismissed.”
Scheffler’s attorney denied that the golfer assaulted anyone. Scheffler called the incident a “very chaotic situation” and a “big misunderstanding” in a statement and said he “never intended to disregard any of the instructions.”
The detective who arrested Scheffler didn’t have his body camera activated when the incident unfolded, which violated police procedures, officials said last week.
Video footage from a pole camera and police dashcam showed Scheffler being led to a police car.
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