Richard Sherman, the free-agent cornerback who is one of the most visible stars in the NFL, was arrested early Wednesday morning in Redmond, Washington, and booked into jail after the police said he tried to break down a door to enter the house of his in-laws.
Sherman has been accused of “burglary domestic violence,” the police said, because he knows the people at the home, and there is no indication that he physically harmed any of its occupants.
Sherman, 33, who has been in a county jail in Seattle since Wednesday morning, has not been charged or arraigned. He will most likely appear in court Thursday. Sherman does not have an agent, and members of his immediate family did not respond to phone calls. It was unclear Wednesday evening whether Sherman had retained a lawyer.
The arrest occurred after several fraught hours that included a dispute between Sherman and his wife, Ashley, who eventually tried to remove their children from the couple’s home in Maple Valley, Washington, according to audio recordings of 911 calls and logs from a computer-aided dispatch system released by the King County Sheriff’s Department. Sherman was also involved in a car crash, the police said, and a physical confrontation with officers during his arrest.
In the first of two successive 911calls Ashley made late Tuesday night, she described Sherman as “drunk and threatening to kill himself.” She told an operator that he was driving away from their home in his car, and that she believed he was headed to her parents’ house in Redmond, about 25 miles to the north.
According to the logs from the dispatch system, officers were sent to the couple’s home at 11:38 p.m. Tuesday, and they spoke to Sherman there. A half-hour later, his wife left their home in a car and Sherman drove after her, with officers following him.
After police intervened again, Sherman drove off in a different direction from his wife at around 1 a.m. Wednesday. The dispatch log provides no more updates on Sherman’s whereabouts or the actions of officers after 1:02 a.m.
Ron Mead, a captain with the Washington State Patrol, said at a news conference that at 1:26 a.m., the police received a report from a construction worker about a collision on Route 520, a state highway that runs through Redmond. The construction worker, according to Mead, said a car had been driven into a construction zone and struck a concrete barrier, then been driven off.
State troopers investigating the crash found Sherman’s car in a commercial parking lot about a half-mile from the construction zone. Mead said that there was extensive damage to the driver-side door and tire, and that ultimately the car could not be driven anymore.
The parking lot is about 2 miles from the home of Sherman’s in-laws. Darrell Lowe, chief of the Redmond Police Department, said it was believed that Sherman had traveled on foot from the parking lot to the home.
According to Lowe, officers were called to the home of Sherman’s wife’s parents shortly before 2 a.m. because Sherman was trying to enter by force. According to the police, four adults were present at the time.
Police said that they talked amiably with Sherman and that one officer knew Sherman from a prior job, where the officer worked as a valet. But when the officers tried to place Sherman under arrest, he walked away from them, according to Lowe. Sherman got into a physical confrontation with police officers and a police dog was deployed to help subdue him, Lowe said.
Lowe said that an officer had sustained minor scrapes and that Sherman went to a hospital with minor injuries on his lower leg and ankle.
Sherman’s wife, Ashley, told The Seattle Times on Wednesday: “At this time we’re going to make no statements, except he didn’t harm anybody. My kids were not harmed in the incident. He’s a good person, and this is not his character. We’re doing all right, just trying to get him out. I want people to know no one was injured.”
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