BELMONT, N.C. — Some members of the Belmont Abbey men’s basketball team were at a party that turned violent in October, but parents are upset after they say five of them were falsely charged.
It happened during a Halloween party on campus in Belmont, police arrested nine basketball players for an alleged assault on a woman in the parking lot.
The school acted swiftly, and Belmont Abbey President William K. Thierfelder put out a statement shortly after the incident saying, “Those found responsible for the egregious acts of that evening will be held fully accountable.”
The question that some parents have is: did campus police move too fast?
Families say after the incident, officers with the campus police department called the team in and arrested nine players without questioning.
Of those nine, charges were dropped against five of them within just a few days.
On the dismissal form, the reason given in each case is the same: “misidentified by victim.”
“It’s the worst; eyewitnesses perceive things differently,” said Kristie Puckett Williams, an activist who has fought for criminal justice reform for years. “We could have 10 people watch the same thing and perceive things vastly different.”
Parents of the players whose charges were dropped reached out to Channel 9′s Glenn Counts outraged. They strongly believe their sons should not have been arrested to begin with.
One parent told Counts that surveillance video and his son’s key card record prove he was in his dorm at the time of the fight.
Those parents say their son was briefly kicked out of school and was subjected to humiliation and hostility, both online and in person.
In a letter to Counts, the parents said this is having a significant impact on their son’s academic performance, mental health, and overall well-being.
“It can’t just be the charges have been dropped, we have to talk about how do we prevent this type of thing from happening again,” Williams said.
The parents believe the school should issue a public apology about the false charges.
Channel 9 reached out to Belmont Abbey to ask if an apology was coming, and we were told they don’t have a comment on the story.
(VIDEO: Potential of school basketball program being cut upsets parents)
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