An attorney for UFC legend Jon Jones has accused Albuquerque, New Mexico police of improperly charging his client for leaving the scene of an accident.
‘It is truly unbelievable that the police would waste this amount of resources on such a case attorney Christopher Dodd told TMZ. ‘The only thing I can think of is that the police were targeting Jon for improper purposes. We will get to the bottom of it and make sure that this baseless case is dismissed.’
The misdemeanor charge capped an eventful week for Jones, who left the sport on Saturday.
During an explosive press conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, UFC chief Dana White announced Jones was retiring from the sport. Jones, considered among the greatest fighters in UFC history, later confirmed the news in a statement.
Within a day, it emerged that the 37-year-old was facing a misdemeanor charge of fleeing the scene of an accident. A criminal summons accusing Jones of the charge was filed in Albuquerque Metropolitan Court Tuesday. Jones has been called to appear in court on July 24 for a bond arraignment.
A police officer was said to be investigating a road accident on February 21 when they discovered a woman in the passenger seat of one of the vehicles, according to a police report obtained by DailyMail.com. The woman was reportedly ‘exhibiting signs of significant intoxication and lacking clothing from the waist down.’
The charge was filed Tuesday just days before the UFC icon announced his retirement
But according to Dodd, the police were foolish to believe the woman’s claim that Jones had been driving the car before fleeing on foot.
‘As Jon’s lawyer,’ Dodd told us, ‘I am stunned by the Albuquerque Police Department’s decision to charge him in this new case. In the thousands of cases I have handled in my career, I have never seen a case as strange and unwarranted as this one.
‘Jon was not driving that night; he wasn’t in the car,’ Dodd continued. ‘It appears that an intoxicated woman used a false allegation against Jon to avoid being arrested for DWI, and the police fell for it.
‘Based on the criminal complaint, it looks like they went so far as to seek a warrant for Jon’s cell phone records while conducting a misdemeanor traffic investigation. I have never heard of such a thing.
‘It is truly unbelievable that the police would waste this amount of resources on such a case. The only thing I can think of is that the police were targeting Jon for improper purposes. We will get to the bottom of it and make sure that this baseless case is dismissed.’
One police service aide (PSA) is said to have spoken to a man involved with the crash via telephone. Although that person remains unidentified, he ‘appeared to be heavily intoxicated and made statements implying his capacity to employ lethal force through third parties,’ according to the PSA.
Jones was later interviewed in person, during which he allegedly claimed that the woman had left his home intoxicated earlier in the day.
He said that she had called him after getting into the crash, and he claimed the person she handed the phone to ‘immediately opened the conversations with unprofessional language, which led him to doubt the legitimacy of the individual’s claim.’
Meanwhile, the woman told police that she had arrived at Jones’ house at around 11:30pm on February 20. She admitted that she drank alcohol and consumed mushrooms at the property.
Jones, arguably the greatest MMA fighter of all time, is pictured greeting Donald Trump
She said she recalled needing to change her clothes after a ‘restroom incident’ and removed her pants with the intention of having Jones drive her home to collect a change of attire.
However, her memory was hazy as she claimed that ‘her next recollection was being at the scene of a traffic accident’ and that the last person she remembered driving the car was Jones.
Jones is said to have called the woman’s phone a total of 13 times from around the time of the accident to the following morning.
It is unclear why the charge was filed four months after the February incident. There is also no indication that the charge is related to Jones’s decision to retire this week.
