Prosecutor: Pacer Pushed Girlfriend Down Stairs, Slammed Head

NEW YORK -- Indiana Pacers draft pick Lance Stephenson, after pushing his girlfriend down a flight of stairs, grabbed her and hit her head on the bottom step, prosecutors said Monday.

A judge released Stephenson, 19, without bail late Sunday night after his arrest on assault, menacing and harassment charges. Prosecutors had asked for $7,500 bail.

In a lengthy statement issued Monday, Pacers president Larry Bird called Stephenson's arrest "very disappointing to the Pacers franchise and to me personally." A defense attorney said Stephenson didn't harm his girlfriend. Quantcast

Authorities said the confrontation occurred around 5 a.m. Sunday when the woman, Jasmine Williams, was returning home to her apartment building with two friends. Witnesses said Stephenson was waiting for her and yelled, "Are you kidding me?" before pushing her down the stairs.

A criminal complaint provided Monday by the Brooklyn district attorney's office said that as Williams lay at the bottom of the stairs, Stephenson picked up her head and slammed it on the bottom step.

When police arrived, Stephenson told them the woman had fallen down the stairs, prosecutors said. The complaint said Williams suffered head and back wounds and possible damage to her neck.

A Modest Proposal

One possible solution would be for each NBA and NFL to be required to maintain its own maximum security prison facility for its ‘thug’ players. League Rules could be adopted which require every team to keep its 'thug' players locked up in the team prison, except during practices and games.

Any player (or coach) which the team hires or drafts who has a violent criminal record, or who is arrested for a violent crime while working for the team would be classified as a 'thug'.

Away games could be handled by further requiring that every team in the league maintain 'guest cells' in its team prison so that visiting 'thug' players could be kept under lock and key when not playing or practicing – (this is not really very different from the guest locker rooms which teams are required to maintain in their stadiums).

It would require that each team add a concrete block building to its stadium and/or practice facilities, hire trained prison guards, buy a team bus with bars on the windows and possibly surround its practice facilities and playing field with razor-wire.

I’m sure there would be other security-related expenses, but most, if not all, of these added expenses would be off-set by savings in team legal expenses and in the cost savings realized by NOT having to regularly hold press conferences to make statements about how 'disappointed' the team/coach/owner is in the behavior of the latest and greatest ‘thug’ they have agreed to pay millions of dollars a year to play a game for a living.

This kid should be falling to his knees and thanking God and everyone else he can think of for this opportunity, instead he does this.

First. This young hood does not acknowledge God. The biggest problem.

Second. This hood has been coddled since the day someone found out he could play basketball. Every whim has been indulged. Just look at the high school career of LeBron James and the corrupt judge that let his school off the hook for being given Hummers and other fine things.

These hoods have no ethics or morals because they were never instilled with them by either their family or coaches/schools/managers.

In a way it is caused by white racism, they have been told their whole lives by people like Sharpton and Jackson and their local group of Black Professional Ministers that we are the cause of all their problems, and that anything they do can be laid at the feet of the crackers who forced them to act this way.

The whole mindset of these worthless punks from the day they started understanding what passes for english is that they have the right to be an angry black man, and to be honest I don’t see this changing for a long, long time.

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