A member of the National Championship-winning South Carolina women’s basketball team is facing some pretty serious charges from an incident that occurred Saturday on campus.
According to court records obtained by local TV station News 19 (WLTX), Ashlyn Watkins, a junior forward on Dawn Staley’s squad, was arrested and charged with kidnapping and first-degree assault and battery.
Warrants filed by the USC Police allege that the incident occurred at a student housing center at the University of South Carolina. They claim that Watkins assaulted a female victim by “forcefully grabbing her face, pulling her by her arms, and pushing her.”
The warrant also states that Watkins picked up the victim and carried her, saying that the basketball star “grabbed the victim’s head and forced her to walk down the hall, thus controlling her movement while preventing her from leaving.”
Eventually, the victim reportedly got away from Watkins and pulled the fire alarm which led to first responders arriving on the scene where the victim was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
News 19 also reported that in court for her bond hearing, Watkins’ alleged victim was referred to as a minor and the two knew each other.
University of South Carolina women’s basketball player Ashlyn Watkins is facing some serious charges stemming from an alleged incident on Saturday.
“We believe once everybody has a full grasp of what happened, this will end up being a misunderstanding,” Watkins’ attorney Todd Rutherford said. “What we know for certain is that Ashlyn did not assault anyone and she did not kidnap anyone.”
Watkins was reported to have been detained at around 3 pm local time and released by 3:30 pm on a $30,000 personal recognizance bond, and if that’s all completely accurate, that is one efficient jail.
We’ll have to keep an eye on this story because the initial details coming out are wild. When Watkins gets her day in court, I’m sure more information about what transpired will come out.
